Flying out of Northwest Arkansas Airport might not be as terrible financially as it would seem.
Convincing travelers of that is the goal of the Northwest Arkansas Council’s new FareFlightNWA program, which the nonprofit organization announced earlier this month. The program, which can be found at FareFlightNWA.org, has a cost calculator so visitors can enter numbers for prospective trips — airfare for flying out of XNA or Tulsa or Kansas City — and the calculator will show how much added costs there are compared with flying out of XNA.
It is no secret that airfare from XNA is more, sometimes much more, than flights from other cities. There is a temptation for a leisure, price-shopping traveler to save a few hundred bucks by flying out of a larger, more competitive airport.
The council wants to show people that doing that isn’t always the cheapest option. The calculator shows that the cost of flying out of Kansas City can be $238 more when gas and parking are considered.
(As a father who is planning a vacation trip next month with his two young girls, the idea of driving three hours to Kansas City before getting on a plane with them — two sweet, lovable hyenas in human form — for another few hours … well, the airfare better be a LOT cheaper.)
Council President and CEO Nelson Peacock said the council wanted to illustrate the value of XNA’s convenience.
“While existing carriers offer excellent access for area residents, XNA has some of the highest fares in the country, making it a less attractive option,” Peacock said. “The price of air travel is a key consideration, but XNA offers significant conveniences over other airports located many miles away, and there are acceptable fares available at XNA. Our goal is to highlight the benefits of XNA and publicize low fares anytime they become available.”
The program comes as the airport, located in Highfill, a few miles southwest of Bentonville and Rogers, is enjoying a banner year. XNA CEO Aaron Burkes said passenger statistics show that the airport had its best month ever in May with 168,203 total passengers.
The airport has had nearly 690,000 total passengers so far this year and looks on pace to surpass last year’s record of 1.57 million. XNA has surpassed 1 million passengers every year since 2004.
“Certainly any promotion that shows the benefits of flying out of XNA is good,” Burkes said. “We have long believed XNA is a better bargain than it looks like when you’re going out shopping prices. If you live in northwest Arkansas you’re having to drive to Kansas City or Tulsa; your real cost is quite a bit higher than your ticket price. That is a great feature to highlight these other costs associated with travel.”
Burkes said he is optimistic that XNA fares are primed to go down closer to the national average — statistics show XNA fares are $120 to $190 more than the national average. The airport recently announced Frontier will start a nonstop flight to Denver and Allegiant will start one to Nashville, Tennessee.
The Frontier route to Denver is already influencing United to lower its fare to Denver. The council believes that the more people fly XNA, the more fares will recede.
“We are seeing an impact on these fares,” Burkes said. “The fares are coming down, we believe. We don’t have empirical documentation to prove that yet. It’s based on the increased competition.”
Burkes said the airlines servicing XNA are using larger airplanes, increasing seating capacity. Burkes said seat capacity is up over 23% this year, hopefully a sign of better, lower fares in the future.
“It is a huge increase, and they want to fill those planes,” Burkes said. “I think it will help the more attention we get. A lot of times when people do a search for airfare they just look on Travelocity or Orbitz or something like that and making them more aware of the options that are available for the leisure travelers or those looking for steep discounted travel is a good thing.”
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