Study Finds Traffic Up Despite National Trend
Posted: July 30, 2014
By BRYAN GILKERSON
HARRISONBURG — One local airport is bucking the national trend of decreasing air service.
Weyers Cave-based Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport are the only two of Virginia’s nine commercial airports that have not suffered losses in overall service since the beginning of the recession in 2007, according to a study published by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
The study, written by Michael Wittman and published July 15 in The Virginia News Letter, posits that smaller airports “will likely be unable to return to pre-recession levels of air service and airline connectivity.”
Nationwide, the study states, airlines have decreased the number of domestic flights by 14.3 percent from 2007 to 2012.
Smaller airports bore the brunt of these cuts, seeing domestic flights decrease by 21.7 percent over that period.
But Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport, during the same time period, increased its number of annual flights from 1,064 to 1,400, an increase of 31.6 percent.
In addition to private and corporate services, SVRA provides daily commercial flights to Washington Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia.
Greg Campbell, executive director of the local airport, cited several reasons for its success, including the 2008 transfer from U.S. Airways to United Airlines as the airport’s commercial carrier.
“The community has responded really well [to the change],” Campbell said.
He also noted the increase in traffic from the operation of seasonal direct flights to Orlando, Fla., via Frontier Airlines, a service that debuted in November 2012 but was discontinued in April 2013.
During the operation of the route to Orlando, Frontier offered three flights a week, sometimes as low as $99 for a roundtrip ticket.
Campbell said that was the main reason for the airport’s decrease from 1,400 flights in 2012 to 1,108 in 2013, a 20.9 percent drop in one year.
Nevertheless, the airport has still been able to increase its number of flights from 2007 to 2013 by 4.1 percent, the same as Reagan National Airport’s growth over that period, according to the Weldon Cooper study.
While SVRA’s numbers are improving, the airport continues to rely on outside funding to maintain operations.
In 2011, the airport received a $150,000 grant from the Small Community Air Service Development program. The study also estimated that the airport receives more than $3 million a year from the Essential Air Service assistance program.
Both programs seek to provide funds to small airports, usually those that serve rural communities.
Campbell said both programs were important to the continuing operation of the airport. He also pointed out that the programs are “user-funded” and paid by airlines and airports, not by taxpayers.
Campbell said a lot of challenges remain for small airports, and the priority for Shenandoah Valley Regional now is to “maintain current levels.”
However, he is optimistic about the future.
“We’ve got one-stop access from Dulles to literally the world,” he said.
In addition, Campbell said that the airport is in talks with other carriers about branching out to other hubs, as well as possibly reviving the seasonal direct flights to Florida.
“[The] Florida [route] was very successful,” he said, pointing out that 96 percent of seats were sold on the Orlando route while it was operational.
Contact Bryan Gilkerson at 574-6267 or [email protected]
Share this: