Northwest Arkansas National Airport started 2020 with the same kind of record-breaking zeal that was the norm in 2019.
XNA just reported its best-ever January with 67,306 passengers boarding flights – an 18.9% increase over January 2019. It was the 25th consecutive month in which XNA saw more passengers than it did in the same month of the prior year.
It was a solid month for Frontier Airlines, the airport’s low-cost carrier with nonstop service to Denver. Frontier’s presence has been a big contributor to creating competition with other airlines to drive down airfares.
Frontier’s 186-seat planes, which started taking off from XNA in June last year, averaged 143 passengers in January.
There was good news for other airlines, too.
Allegiant Air had its best January at XNA since 2011. The airline, which flew to Destin, Las Vegas, Orlando/Sanford and Phoenix/Mesa last month, boarded 3,807 passengers. Over the past several years, Allegiant saw between 2,400 and 2,900 passengers each January.
American remains the airport’s biggest airline, a distinction it’s held since the airport’s opening in 1998. It carried about 53% of XNA’s passengers last month.
There is no reason to believe XNA’s month-after-month, record-breaking pattern will end any time soon, and that’s because the airlines continue to add services. Allegiant Air, for example, restarts its seasonal service to Nashville on Thursday this week, creating a new option for travelers. The airline didn’t offer nonstop, seasonal service from XNA to Nashville until June last year.
Pictured at the top: Nashville became a Northwest Arkansas National Airport destination in 2019. Allegiant Air started offering the twice-a-week flights to Nashville on June 6, and it performed so well that the airline is starting the service earlier this year. It restarts on Thursday.