XNA Business Traffic Flat, Private Flights in Flux

When business leaders are looking to make spending cutbacks, one of the first items to go is usually business travel.

That has certainly been the case for Executive Aviation Services, which flies out of Drake Field in Fayetteville.

Since the region’s boom years of 2005 and 2006, Executive Aviation has seen about a 50 percent decrease in business travel, said Mark Myers, director of operations for the charter service.

“We’ve seen a pretty big decline in business travel, but a pretty good pickup in personal travel,” Myers said.

He estimated that personal travel and vital organ fly outs have made up for the majority of the dip in business travel, leaving the company off by about 10 percent from what it was at its peak two to three years ago.

Myers noted that much of Executive Aviation’s business customer base was made up of people in the construction and real estate industries, which have obviously fallen off sharply from a couple years ago.

Another major source of headaches for Myers is one that many people are feeling, regardless of where they work – high fuel prices. Only the fuel Myers is worried about is a bit more expensive than gasoline or even diesel.

“I just paid $8.04 [per gallon] for Jet A in Atlanta,” Myers said. “That’s a big dent. That’s double what we were paying less than nine months ago.”

A recent report from the International Air Transport Association that stated business travel was down in March 3.9 percent year-over-year.

Nonetheless, business travel is about the same as it was a year ago at Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, said Scott Van Laningham, CEO of the airport.

“Business travel has actually remained fairly consistent at between 65 and 70 percent,” he said. “There has been a leveling off. It’s been flat the last couple of months, but that’s to be expected with the current economic conditions.”

Traffic at XNA has grown so much and so consistently that officials with the airport are considering plans to add a second concourse, Van Laningham said.

Plans call for the addition to be about 54,000 SF, with a price tag of between $20 million and $25 million. Pending approval by the airport’s board of directors, construction on the concourse could begin next year.

Barring some sort of major economic slowdown, business travel will always be a major component of traffic at XNA, Van Laningham said.