If you tilt your head just right and squint a little, Northwest Arkansas National Airport is a 1 million passenger facility.
Airport officials on Tuesday shared the latest passenger data, showing 75,011 people boarded flights at XNA in February. From March 1, 2023 through Feb. 29 this year, the airport welcomed 1,011,204 passengers through its doors.
It’s not quite the same as 1 million passengers in a calendar year, but it’s the next best thing. The calendar year record was just set in 2023 at 991,489.
The airport’s previous best February was in 2020 when 67,144 boarded flights.
American dominates February
This year’s February was especially good for American Airlines, which put 39,361 people on flights to one of its eight destinations from XNA: Charlotte, Phoenix, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago O’Hare, Washington Reagan, Miami, Los Angeles and New York LaGuardia. American, which had more than 580 departures from the airport in February, carried 52% of XNA passengers.
On the other end on the spectrum was Frontier Airlines, which didn’t make a single flight from XNA in February. It’s the only time since the airline first flew from XNA to Denver in mid-2019 that it’s had a month with no operations. It flew infrequently at times during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it never eliminated its entire schedule for a month.
Frontier is far busier this month with five flights a week scheduled to its Denver hub.
Busier in March, April, May
There’s every possibility that XNA will set new records in March, April and May.
A weekly report by an XNA consultant, which tracks schedule changes by the airlines, shows the airlines this month have 4.4% more seats for sale at XNA than they did in March 2023. Big seat capacity increases are planned in April (8.1% more) and May (6.1% more).
