A late January spate of bad weather, coupled with the month’s usual downturn in travel, made it so Northwest Arkansas National Airport never really had a chance of keeping its impressive performance streak alive.
The airport’s string of eight straight months with at least 100,000 passengers came to an end, according to data provided by airport administrators Monday.
January saw 80,335 passengers, the airport’s smallest monthly number of enplanements since February last year.
While January isn’t ever good for travel at XNA, it was especially challenged last month. With deep snow, terrible weather and airlines cancelling just about every flight, the airport on Jan. 24 saw fewer than 125 people screened at the Transportation Security Administration’s checkpoint. Only a portion of those screened at TSA were passengers; many were airport workers.
It was an especially slow month for Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Air.
Frontier, which offers nonstop service to Denver, flew just three times in the entire month, totaling 275 passengers. While the airline carries 1,000 to 3,000 passengers from XNA most months, it has significantly reduced its January flying from the airport in each of the past three years.
Allegiant, meanwhile, saw 4,907 passengers in January. It was the airline’s smallest number of monthly passengers departing on its flights from XNA since May 2021. Allegiant took off just 40 times in January. The airline flew 50 to 60 times from XNA in each of the previous several months; it took off 83 times in August and 126 times in July.
It seems probable that February won’t be a month with 100,000 passengers, either. The number of people moving through the TSA security checkpoint has been low so far this month, and the airport’s best February ever came last year with 76,719 passengers. Even if it improves significantly, it’s unlikely to reach 100,000.
March historically brings higher passenger volumes at XNA. Excluding the pandemic-impacted years (2020–2022), March traffic since 2013 has averaged 22.4% higher than February, including a 31.5% increase last year.
