A higher percentage of local travelers are relying on Northwest Arkansas National Airport to begin their journeys, a new report shows.
Volaire Aviation Consulting, which often works for XNA, determined in a report published this week that the airport retained 75.1% of air travelers who live in the airport’s 15-county catchment area that includes portions of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.
The findings in the report are based on travel in the 12-month period that ended March 31. The 75.1% retention compares to 72.8% retention in the previous 12 months (April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024).
Volaire’s so-called “leakage report,” a reference to the number of passengers who choose to fly from other airports, comes as XNA is on its way to what should end up being the airport’s best year in terms of passenger numbers. Despite losing some passengers who choose to drive to airports in Tulsa, Kansas City, the Dallas/Fort Worth metro and Springfield, June was the best month in the airport’s history with 125,189 passengers. It saw almost 600,000 travelers in the year’s first six months.
Fewer people to Tulsa
Tulsa International Airport is less than 100 miles from western areas of Northwest Arkansas, and the availability of Southwest Airlines flights have long been the airport’s best attribute.
The number of people choosing Tulsa over XNA despite living closer to XNA once exceeded 20%, but the percentage has kept dropping. It was 10.4% in the previous year and 8.3% in the latest report.
Southwest at Tulsa still captures a sizable portion of people living in the XNA catchment area who are going to Las Vegas (36 people a day). While Allegiant Air offers twice-a-week nonstop service to Las Vegas from both XNA and Tulsa, Tulsa’s advantage is that Southwest offers twice-a-day service to Sin City.
Tulsa also remains attractive to people going to Denver (25 people) and Houston (23 people), and the Volaire report shows most of those people are relying on Southwest to get there.
In all, about 341 people make the drive to Tulsa each day, and that’s about 38 fewer people each day than in the previous year.
Retaining New York, Charlotte
XNA’s top destination in the most recent 12-month period was New York/Newark (210 travelers a day) followed by No. 2 Denver (194 people) and No. 3 Los Angeles (192 people).
XNA does exceedingly well when it comes to New York, retaining 87.6% of all travelers. It benefits from four nonstop flights a day going to New York LaGuardia.
XNA does even better when it comes to Charlotte as the airport keeps 90.5% of all travelers going there, and it has a major service advantage over Tulsa. American Airlines flies to Charlotte from XNA four or five times each day; it offers two or three flights a day from Tulsa, depending on the day.
XNA also does well in keeping those headed to Atlanta (86.7%) and Chicago (86.1%). Atlanta is the airport’s No. 9 destination; Chicago sits at No. 5.
Springfield-Branson ranks No. 3
While the vast majority of travelers in the XNA catchment area are relying on XNA or Tulsa, it’s Springfield-Branson National Airport that’s the No. 3 choice. That makes sense because some areas of XNA’s catchment area in northern Arkansas and southwest Missouri area are as close to Springfield as they are to XNA.
Still, the percentage of travelers choosing the airport is Springfield is just 4.1% overall. Kansas City International Airport ranks No. 4 at 3.9%; Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport captures 3.8%.
