Airport Traffic Returns To High Levels of 2000 At John Wayne Airport

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Airport Traffic Returns To High Levels of 2000 At John Wayne Airport

By CHRIS CZIBORR

Orange County Business Journal

It’s been a slow couple of years at John Wayne Airport, though passenger traffic through the first five months of the year has returned to the former highs of 2000.

Barely.

Travel via John Wayne Airport through May was up 1.6 percent to 3.2 million passengers, versus May 2000. It’s up 4.6 percent compared with the first five months of last year.

Travel woes, which first hit three years ago with the economic slowdown and then the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, have extended into 2003. SARS, “orange” terror alerts, war with Iraq and the still-sluggish economy have all conspired to limit travel this year.

In May, a typically busy month because of Memorial Day, the passenger count rose just 1 percent, to 700,000, compared with a year ago.

The number of general airline flights fell 6.2 percent, to 6,928 in May, versus a year earlier. The flight count is off 2.2 percent, to 33,950, for the first five months of the year.

Meanwhile, the number of short-haul commuter flights in and out of John Wayne Airport, which are counted separately from general carrier flights, is up 120 percent to 5,576 for the first five months of the year. In May, these air taxi flights jumped about 150 percent, to 1,333.

Two new commuter carriers, American Eagle and American West Express, boosted those numbers.

John Wayne relies on domestic short- to- medium-haul flights, especially for its business passengers. So fears about SARS and terrorism are somewhat mitigated there.

But during the war in Iraq, the government’s terror alert increase to “orange” meant security stopped and searched every vehicle entering the airport, creating long backups. When the terror alert is at a lower level it currently is at “yellow” only vehicles entering parking structures are searched.

“Things are going well people are passing through the checkpoints without much backup,” said airport spokesperson Anne McCarley.

Airport officials expect to see a couple of new airlines shortly. Denver-based Frontier Airlines Inc., which could offer three daily flights to Denver, and Oak Creek, Wis.-based Midwest Express Holdings Inc., which operates Midwest Airlines, plans to fly two Orange County-Kansas City routes.

The airport can add 12 “noise-monitored” departures a day, thanks to recently eased volume caps for such flights. The former cap was 73 flights.

The airport’s annual passenger cap was boosted to 10.3 million from 8.4 million at the start of the year.

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