XNA Prepares to Soar as Passengers Return

Leaders at the Northwest Arkansas National Airport say they’re on course, welcoming back business travelers, refocusing on long-planned capital improvements and acquiring land for expansion.

The airport, known as XNA, has seen total passenger numbers return to pre-pandemic levels after bottoming out in 2020. It served 1.2 million passengers in 2021, far short of its record 1.8 million in 2019, but robust enough for optimism.

“We are really getting back on track,” airport CEO Aaron Burkes said.

Burkes said the airport and its board are proceeding with expansion plans such as the construction of an additional concourse, a $100 million project, and a skybridge from the terminal to parking.

On April 18, during a special board meeting, Burkes got unanimous approval to spend $865,000 on 38 acres adjacent to the airport. Burkes said the land is in the direct line of what will be XNA’s second runway, and it was best to take control of the land promptly. “We had the opportunity,” Burkes said. “We felt we needed to jump on this right away.”

The airport has added money to its budget for land purchases and has set aside $4 million for acquisitions, Burkes said. About $2 million has been spent or set aside this year, including $640,000 for a tract along state Highway 264.

In an interview, Burkes called the land acquisition a necessity even if a new runway is a long way off.

He called it planning for the future. “We won’t build that second runway for probably 25 years or so. We know with the growth that is headed this way in northwest Arkansas, if we don’t tie the land up now and get it under our control, we won’t realistically have the ability to expand in the future.”

Quick Descent

The pandemic shutdown halted nine straight years of total passenger growth.

Business and government leaders had worked for decades to build a larger airport to handle a travel surge fueled by companies like Walmart of Bentonville and Tyson Foods of Springdale. After a three-year, $109 million construction effort, XNA opened in October 1998.

Before 2020, it had posted only three years of year-over-year total passenger declines, in 2008, 2009 and 2011. It served more than 1 million total passengers for the first time in 2004 and surpassed 1.5 million total passengers in 2018.

Passengers surpassed 1.8 million in 2019, a record year that airport leaders didn’t expect to stand for long. The regional population was surging, and the airport’s main worry was attracting more airlines to boost leisure travel numbers.

Then the pandemic hit, decimating the nationwide travel industry. XNA’s annual passenger count dropped to just 721,107 in 2020. In April 2020, fewer than 6,500 passengers passed through.

Those nightmarish numbers are in the past, and Burkes said the airport’s long-term plans remain intact.

“Obviously we are a fast-growing region,” Burkes said. “We think we will be back to 2019 levels, which is our high mark, by next year. Going into 2023 it is very likely we will be very close to the numbers we had in 2019. “The thing about airport planning and construction is your time horizon is really long.”

The next major project is an on-site hotel. Burkes said the private development will lease land from the airport, and he hopes proposals will begin to be submitted soon. There are several potential sites, some directly adjacent to the terminal. A site closer to the terminal will mean a longer lease because the project will be more expensive.

“This is a big deal,” said Andrew Branch, XNA’s chief business development officer. “The airport will be married to this for 30-40 years so we are really doing a lot of due diligence on the front end.”

Burkes said he would prefer a site on the other side of the new parking deck, one unsuitable for other developments. It would also allow for a taller hotel and fewer noise problems from plane traffic.

But Burkes said hotel developers might want a different site, so he, Branch and the board will wait for specific proposals. Requests will go out in the next few months, and Burkes hopes work starts on the hotel as early as next year.

“We want to retain as much flexibility as possible,” he said. “I understand from a hotel developer standpoint being as close to the terminal as possible is a benefit, and it will help them in filling rooms.”

Finding Funding

XNA got some good news — and cold, hard cash — from federal legislation last year.

The infrastructure bill signed by President Joe Biden will send $4.4 million to XNA. Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack secured another $4 million in earmarked funds for XNA from the March appropriations bill.

That money will kickstart the skybridge project that had been delayed by the pandemic. Burkes said he hopes to obtain additional money from the federal Airport Terminal Program, which provides grants for improvements.

XNA applied for funds earlier this year for its $30 million skybridge project and $7 million terminal lobby project and hopes to find out by the end of the year if it will receive any money.

The airport is also planning a new $12 million air traffic control tower.

“Our planning horizon is long so we knew the pandemic, one way or the other, was going to end,” Burkes said. “We needed to move forward with planning, with design, with architectural work on all of our projects so we would be ready to pull the trigger when we had the funding and the enplanements were back. A large part of our pause was to get our funding together.

“We definitely hit a pause, but right now we are at 2018 enplanement levels so we lost about four years. We also know that five years from now we will be pretty close to where we would have been if the pandemic had never happened.”