Air traffic down

[Patrick]

Air traffic is down this month at our state airports. Something interesting I saw in this report was that Southwest accounted for 1/3 of the passengers in and out of our airport. I still think we should go after Southwest for a hub located in OKC.

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Air passenger traffic slows at Oklahoma airports: After three months of sharp increases, April numbers show slight decline

by Matt Cauthron
The Journal Record

5/16/2006 TULSA - Tulsa International Airport and Will Rogers World Airport failed to post significant increases in air passenger traffic in April, after three-straight months of increases over 2005 numbers.

Will Rogers reported a 0.64-percent decrease in passengers compared to April 2005, while Tulsa International reported only a 0.6-percent increase. Both airports had seen a passenger increase of between 3 percent and 10 percent over 2005 in each of the previous three months.

Dr. Robert Dauffenbach, professor of economics at the University of Oklahoma, said the April numbers are nothing to get riled up about. He said air passenger traffic still hasn't recovered from the early-decade recession and that a one-month decline in air passenger traffic doesn't constitute a significant trend.

Tulsa Airport Authority officials said the lack of an increase in April could be attributed to several factors, including a rash of bad weather, which caused fewer flights to come in and out of the airport. Airlines have also been cutting costs to offset rising fuel prices by offering fewer flights.

Marion Blakely, director of the Federal Aviation Administration, told the Associated Press that the FAA expects planes to be more crowded than ever this summer because of the trend toward cost-cutting. She said the number of flights in the U.S. dropped from 44,000 in April 2005 to 42,000 a year later.

Those numbers reflect the trend at Tulsa International, as the airport saw about 1,800 fewer flights in April than a year ago. Will Rogers will release its April activity report in about a week.

The airline with the most passengers coming through Will Rogers and Tulsa International in 2006 has been Southwest Airlines, which accounted for nearly one-third of all flights boarded at Will Rogers in April.

[venture]

If Southwest was able to fly to more markets they would. They have no desire to as their level of service already meets the market demand for them.