XNA to Add LaGuardia Flight in 2016, Woo Airlines (OPINION)

Did you know the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (XNA) will begin offering a new, nonstop flight to New York City’s LaGuardia Airport beginning in April 2016, via Delta Airlines?

Stay tuned as to whether ticket prices will improve when two airlines begin serving that market.

Also this month, XNA will host a national meeting between airlines and airports — a la “speed dating” style. Representatives from airports and carriers converge upon Northwest Arkansas Oct. 20-22. At the Embassy Suites in Rogers, they’ll rotate meeting each other every 25 minutes.

Airport director Kelly Johnson says XNA is hosting the event to showcase our airport and region to the airlines. The agenda includes a half-day meeting at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and dinner at 21c Museum Hotel. To really strut our region’s stuff, Johnson says. It’s fitting that these events would feature “The Museum that Alice Built” and “The Hotel She Hand-Picked.”

Remember: But for Walmart, we’d likely still be flying out of Fayetteville’s tiny, fog-prone Drake Field. Sam Walton made the early push for a new airport, and his daughter Alice was first chairperson of the Northwest Arkansas Council, formed in 1990 with the primary goal of constructing a new airport.

I’ve been inquiring about fares, logistics and our retail community’s sentiment about XNA, because I’ve been making travel arrangements for our upcoming CPG School on Oct. 21. Speakers for that event include retail buyers and founders of Fortune 500 companies, and we’d love for you to join us at the Northwest Arkansas Community College’s Shewmaker Center in Bentonville.

During the recent economic downturn, many Walmart suppliers expected employees to scour the region’s airports to find fares cheaper than XNA’s. I hear this is lessening. I do think people are intensely proud of our airport, where travel options and quality are made possible by retail-related travel.

Airfare is always the chief complaint, right? And it’s valid. One employee of a Walmart supplier tells me he’s due in Chicago this week; the fare for an XNA ticket was $1,200, so he opted to fly from Tulsa on American Airlines for $292.80, including taxes and fees. Ouch.

XNA fares can run 30 percent higher. As a result, XNA loses 35 percent in business to other airports, such as Tulsa, Springfield, Fort Smith and Kansas City, XNA’s Johnson says.

“Tulsa’s the big one, 12.6 percent,” Johnson said. “And 9 percent of our travelers drive to Dallas to fly. That one surprised us. We think it’s international vacation travelers, but we don’t know with any great degree of certainty.”

But XNA is a positive anomaly in that flights and seats are expanding. Between January 2015 and January 2016, United Airline seats are expected to increase 56 percent with added flights — and larger aircraft with two-class cabins — going to Chicago, Denver and San Francisco.

New, nonstop flights eliminate the dreaded possibility of a second leg being canceled, stranding a traveler overnight. Yes, most XNA planes are still regional jets — outside the occasional 737 or MD80 — but that means more frequency of flights and options. The use of 167-seat airplanes would leave only two daily flights to Chicago instead of six, Johnson said.

No inquiry of Johnson would be complete without the eternal nagging question: Any news on adding another low-fare carrier?

“We meet with them all the time; we had 28 airline meetings last year,” she said. “It’s a full-court press. We’ve met with Sprint, Frontier, Jet Blue and Virgin. Southwest is not really a discount carrier anymore. Their fares have gone up 16 percent in recent years and service has gone down in airports such as Little Rock and Tulsa. They’re flying big airport to big airport. We don’t meet the Southwest business model and they’re pulling out of markets our size.” 

Robin Mero is content director for Bentonville-based Selling to the Masses, which serves as a destination for resources to help early-stage, consumer-product companies get and stay on the shelves of the country’s top retailers.