The maps and charts in the latest market study for Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport told the familiar, challenging story:
Almost all the communities that are an easy drive from the airport are also an easy drive to bigger airports with more service. No similarly sized airport has seen the kind of loss of service as the Peninsula’s, the $15,000 study reported. People here increasingly opt for other airports, it said — even far-off Dulles International, a three-hour drive if traffic’s clear on Interstate 95.
But within that last bit of news was buried some detail about those Dulles-bound travelers that should beef up the airport’s pitch to airlines to come here. For example, some 20,000 people a year from the Peninsula, Middle Peninsula and the counties at the other end of the James River Bridge make that drive to catch a Korea Air Lines flight to Seoul.
And they represent just one example — an unusually detailed example — of what airport executive director Ken Spirito says is the key message he’s been telling airlines for years.
“This is good market here,” he said.
Think of those Seoul-bound travelers, he added. He plans to mention them to Delta Air Lines because that airline just so happens to have direct service to Seoul from Atlanta, the airport Delta serves from Newport News/Williamsburg, as well as Detroit.
It’d be nice to woo some of those passengers from a foreign-flag carrier by maybe expanding the Atlanta connection or adding one to Detroit, he’ll be saying.
He says he’ll talk about 20,000 travelers a year putting up with a three-plus-hour drive to Dulles to American Airlines, too, since American has its own Seoul nonstops from its Dallas hub.
Those 20,000 will likely figure when he talks to United Airlines, too. It offers a one-stop connection from its Dulles hub, as well as nonstops to many of the other European, Asian and Latin American cities people from the Peninsula fly to and from.
“We’re the only airport around without United,” he said. He added that he might even drop a diplomatic hint that Virginians, even on the Peninsula, have a stake in the $50 million Gov. Terry McAuliffe has promised to invest in Dulles, a critical hub for United.
It’s been tough to attract airlines here.
The old AirTran service, which ceased operations in 2012, showed people will use Newport News/Williamsburg. But the frenzy of airline mergers that saw AirTran disappear and the fuel price spikes that followed sparked a concerted effort by airlines to save money by running fewer, fuller flights. AirTran’s new owner, Southwest Airlines, had little interest in taking on the expense of a Newport News service when it already had a lot of flights from Norfolk.
The aviation consulting firm InterVISTAS reported that Newport News/Williamsburg has been the hardest hit of airports serving similarly sized markets, with a 63 percent drop in traffic over the past five years, at a time when some — like Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Fort Wayne, Ind. — have managed double-digit percentage growth. Former AirTran stops such as Bloomington, Ill.; Huntsville, Ala.; and Jackson, Miss., have seen drops in traffic but only roughly half of Newport News/Williamsburg’s.
That decline came even as the number of trips made by people flying into and out of the airport’s core market — the Peninsula, Middle Peninsula and a swath of communities from Suffolk west to Southampton County — soared from 1.2 million a year to 1.8 million.
But at the same time, the percentage of those travelers coming through Newport News/Williamsburg plunged from 53 percent to 20 percent.
Ultimately, they’re the real challenge, said Jessica Wharton, the airport’s marketing director.
And the real paradox.
“It’s like the chicken and the egg,” she said. “Do the seats come first, or do the passengers?”
Ress can be reached by phone at 757-247-4535.
