Northwest Arkansas scored two nice wins over the weekend thanks to its friends from Tennessee.
Everyone — yes, everyone — knows about the Razorbacks’ 19-14 football win on Saturday night over the University of Tennessee, but another victory came a day later.
Northwest Arkansas National Airport on Sunday scored its highest number of passengers in a single day, seeing 5,621 people board its departing flights.
At least some of the credit for XNA’s win goes to the fans of the Volunteers who showed up in big numbers at Saturday night’s affair.
Both Delta Air Lines and United Airlines made it easier to get to the Arkansas-Tennessee game, too, adding nonstop flights from Nashville to XNA just because the Volunteers were playing in Fayetteville. Those airlines don’t have regular nonstop service to XNA from the Music City.
XNA has surpassed 5,000 passengers in a single day just five times in its nearly 26 years in operation. Four of those times were this year, including June 7, June 8 and Sept. 19.
The June days can be linked to all the travel that occurs due to the Walmart Shareholders’ Celebration that occurs in the region each year. That September date is a bit of an outlier, but Thursday’s are huge travel days at XNA because low-cost carriers Allegiant Air, Frontier Airlines and Breeze Airways all have flights that day.
The only other time XNA exceeded 5,000 was June 2, 2023. It was Walmart-related.
Aaron Burkes, the airport’s president and CEO, shared a list of the airport’s Top 50 days, noting that 40 of the Top 50 occurred this year.
