TRANSPORTATION
Airport passenger count dips a bit in October
The nation’s travel industry slump reached the runways of Buffalo Niagara International Airport in October, with the first dip in passenger counts in nearly three years.
While the flier drop was tiny — just two-tenths of one percent — it’s something local airport officials aren’t used to.
“We’ve only seen our numbers climb, so this is a little shocking,” said Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority Executive Director Lawrence Meckler. “But we’re not going to read too much into the numbers until we see what the rest of the year brings.”
The Buffalo airport has steered clear of the economic turbulence that has led to a year-to-date national average passenger decline of 1.07 percent through the first nine months of 2008.
By contrast, the Buffalo airport has charted a 5.4 percent rise in flier counts.
“We’ve been lucky to have so many Canadian travelers to help prop us up, but we’re still not immune to what’s happening in the economy and the airline industry,” Meckler said.
Enplanements in October slipped to 237,587, from 238,107 in October 2007, the first drop in year-over-year comparisons since March 2006 — a decrease that had more to do with the calendar than traveler appetite.
The March 2005 count included the high-volume Easter/spring break period, while in 2006 Easter fell in April.
Prior to that passenger drop, flier counts had risen steadily since the second half of 2002.
In analyzing the October dip, William Vanacek, the NFTA’s aviation director, said it can likely be linked to recent flight reductions by US Airways, the airport’s No. 2 airline. US Airways flew 20 fewer outbound flights last month compared with October 2007, and its total passenger count fell by 9,896 fliers.
“We don’t want to get too jumpy about it yet,“ Vanacek said. “We need to get a few more months of numbers under our belt before we know if this is a trend.”
Despite the slight dip, the airport is on track to meet its target of 5.5 million passengers in 2008 even if head counts remain stagnant for November and December.
