Arkansas Business’ busiest airports list shows a year of mixed results for Arkansas airports in 2010.
(Click here for a PDF of the list of busiest airports.)
At the top of the list, Clinton National Airport in Little Rock had a 1 percent decrease in passengers.
Out of the state’s top 10 airports, only Clinton National and Texarkana Regional Airport, which is undergoing renovation, saw drops in passenger totals year over year.
The state’s second-busiest airport, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport near Bentonville, saw an upswing of almost 4 percent in its passenger counts. No. 3, Fort Smith Regional Airport, grew its total number of travelers by nearly 10 percent.
Every other airport in the top 24 for which Arkansas Business obtained comparative data saw decreases in passenger counts.
The year 2011 was somewhat better for Clinton National Airport, but not Northwest Arkansas Regional. Clinton National had 1.1 million passengers board planes in 2011, an increase of about .5 percent from 2010. On the other hand, Northwest saw 539,154 boarding passengers, a drop of nearly 2 percent over the year previous.
Both of the state’s top two airports saw significant construction work in 2011.
Northwest wrapped up a $20 million concourse last fall. The work, a 54,000-SF addition, added eight gates for a total of 22.
The project allowed for construction of a larger lounge area for waiting passengers and other interior upgrades, Executive Director Scott Van Laningham said.
“We were out of space, and we had some pent-up demand,” he explained.
The Little Rock airport completed a 3,000-SF expansion to its security checkpoint area last December. The work was part of a $67 million first phase of the airport’s redevelopment plan. (For more on the Clinton National renovation, see story on Page 1.)
The terminal had looked about the same since the 1970s, while the number of the airport’s boarding passengers more than doubled since then, said Shane Carter, spokesman for Clinton National Airport.
“I think that it has certainly served its purpose and it’s exciting to be able to offer such an upgraded terminal for our passengers,” Carter said.