The busiest months at Northwest Arkansas National Airport always happen in the summertime, but that won’t be the case this year.
New statistics shared by airport administrators today show October produced 73,369 passengers, the highest monthly total since December 2019. The airport continues to rebuild its passenger numbers after seeing far less air travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As October goes, it was just about as good as could be for XNA. The only times in the airport’s 23 years that October produced more passengers were in 2018 and 2019.
American Airlines led the way as it always does at XNA, boarding 36,152 passengers. It carried 49% of the airport’s passengers.
Delta Air Lines and United Airlines each carried about 16% of the airport’s passengers.
The three low-cost carriers — Breeze Airways, Allegiant Air and Frontier Airlines — accounted for everyone else, about 19% of all travelers.
The low-cost carriers continue to expand at XNA and are far larger than just three years ago when Allegiant was the only low-cost option, hauling 5% of the travelers.
Frontier, in particular, had a good October. The airline first arrived at XNA in mid-2019 with three-times-a-week flights to Denver, but it added twice-a-week flights to Las Vegas in August this year. That Sin City addition helped boost its passengers to 3,826, the highest number it’s carried from XNA.
Breeze had a good month, too, carrying 2,478 passengers last month. The airline started service at XNA in June, and October was its best month.
XNA seems well positioned to have good November and December numbers as more new service is on its way.
Frontier started flying to Orlando on Nov. 1, and Allegiant Air starts flights to Punta Gorda and Houston Hobby later this month. Additionally, American recently restarted its flights to Los Angeles, and United began flying to Newark again. Those new options should lead to more flying from XNA.
