The Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport continues piling up impressive passenger counts.
September’s boardings were 19.1 percent higher than the same month in 2018 with the airport seeing 77,060 outbound passengers – 13,000 more than September 2018.
For the year’s first nine months, XNA has boarded 682,096 passengers – about 17 percent better than the same nine months in 2018.
If the 17 percent growth continues, XNA will finish the year with around 922,000 passengers – 134,000 more passengers than 2018.
September proved incredible for American Airlines, which just added a daily nonstop flight to Philadelphia. The airline boarded more than 40,000 people during the month, an increase of 29.7 percent.
Frontier Airlines improved performance of its three-times-a-week flights to Denver that first took off in late June. Frontier averaged 132 passengers on flights in August and improved to 135 passengers in September.
That Frontier route to Denver doesn’t appear to have negatively impacted United Airlines, which flies to Denver as well as Newark, Chicago O’Hare, San Francisco and Houston. United boarded about 400 more passengers than it did in September 2018. The fact that the United flights continue to do well suggests Frontier is building its own passenger base rather than capturing them from its competitor.
Allegiant Air’s growth at XNA continues, too.
The airline accounted for 5.3 percent of XNA’s passengers last year. It’s on pace to board 7.3 percent of the airport’s passengers this year, but that percentage should increase as the airline adds service from XNA to Phoenix-Mesa in November. Allegiant’s September was 17.5 percent better than the same month last year.
