Northwest Arkansas National Airport finishes year down 61% from 2019

Northwest Arkansas National Airport saw an expected drop in the number of flyers in December, despite a bump during the holidays.

According to airline data, 26,575 passengers flew out of Northwest National in December compared with 77,684 in December 2019; that's off almost 66%.

The December number is down slightly from November when 28,801 people flew out of the airport. November was down 62.2% from the same month in 2019.

Northwest National saw 360,133 passengers in 2020, compared with 922,533 who caught a flight out of the airport in 2019. Northwest National finished the year down 61% from 2019.

The lack of traffic is directly attributable to the covid-19 pandemic, which devastated the airline industry beginning in April, according to airport officials. Numbers have improved incrementally since then but remain dismal.

"As more and more people get vaccinated or develop immunity after recovering from the virus, we expect travel demand to bounce back," said Aaron Burkes, airport CEO. "Business travel will likely be the slowest to return, but there is a lot of pent-up demand for leisure travel. 2021 could see stronger leisure travel than many experts are predicting."

Destin/Fort Walton Beach; Orlando, Fla.; Denver; Los Angeles; and Las Vegas were the top five destinations for travelers from Northwest National in the third quarter of 2020 and accounted for almost 30% of the airport's total traffic, according to Mike Lum with Volaire Aviation, a consultant to the airport. Leisure travel sustained Northwest National, traditionally a business-centered airport, thorough the summer months.

XNA went from 329 flights in the last week of February to 19 a few weeks later, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data. The airport averaged 302 flights a week in 2019. Air travel hit a low of 10 flights a day in April.

Flights have been added and hit 125 outbound flights per week in early December and 133 the first week of January. Destinations have been cut from a pre-pandemic peak of 18 to nine.

Lum said it's also become significantly cheaper to fly out of Northwest National, which has consistently been a complaint for nonbusiness travelers.

The U.S. Department of Transportation recently released quarterly traffic and fare data for the three months ending in September 2020, Lum said. Northwest National's average one-way domestic fare fell 41%, or $94 each way, to $136. The domestic fare for all U.S. travelers fell $59, or 34%, to $113 each way, he said.

The year started with great promise amid record numbers for the first two months. Northwest National was up 18.9%, year-over-year in January and up 15% in February. By March, the covid-19 pandemic had devastated the industry and enplanements were down by 52%.

Then it became worse.

The airport was deserted in April and hit a monthly low for passengers for the year at 3,151, down more than 95% from the same month in 2019 when 71,557 flew out.

A slow recovery began in May, and numbers improved incrementally every month until December. Burkes wasn't surprised numbers overall for December were down.

Health experts urged people not to fly during the holidays to limit the spread of covid-19 and many stayed home, although there was a slight uptick before and after Christmas Day both nationally and at Northwest National.

Northwest National Airport had fewer than 1,000 people flying most days in December, but on the days before and after Christmas, those numbers were regularly over 1,000.

"Christmas holiday travel demand was stronger than expected, with December 23rd activity down only 7% from the same day last year," Burkes said.

U.S. air travel hit its peak of the pandemic over the Christmas weekend despite a surge in covid-19 cases and hospitalizations.