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Airports brace for fewer flights, passengers
As airlines falter, facilities look for new revenue, consider partial closures
 Matt Slocum / AP For the first time in its 34-year history, Dallas-Fort Worth airport is freezing its budget and rethinking future expansion plans. |
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FORT WORTH, Texas - From his office overlooking the runways of one of the nation's busiest airports, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Chief Executive Jeffrey Fegan sees the slowdown coming this fall.
Airlines are cutting flights under the pressure of rising fuel costs, and that means fewer passengers and less money from parking and food concessions at FW. For the first time in its 34-year history, the airport is freezing its budget and rethinking future expansion plans.
"We couldn't do that even after 9-11," Fegan says.
With the airline industry in a nosedive, airports are hitting turbulence: After years of growth, they are delaying capital projects, freezing hiring, and considering increases in everything from landing fees to parking. Concessionaires are hurting, and many expect to close.
The problems are greatest at secondary airports that are losing a bigger share of their flights and lack international service to shore up weak domestic traffic.
Airports in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Houston, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Oakland, Calif., Columbus, Ohio, and elsewhere are expected to lose more than 10 percent of their scheduled service later this year as airlines eliminate flights.
Oakland, which is losing service from American and Continental Airlines Inc., is canceling a terminal project. Columbus also lost service when hometown carrier Sky's Airlines shut down in April after finding it could not keep offering $10 flights when jet fuel was $3 a gallon.
In San Luis Obispo, Calif., Delta Air Lines Inc. is pulling out after just one year, ending service to Salt Lake City. And American Eagle will depart, dropping its five daily flights to Los Angeles and closing a maintenance base that has been around longer than Eagle.
"American was an absolute shock," said airport director Klaasje Nairne. "They were always the hometown airline. They were in the downtown parades. They invested in the community."
Eagle's flights out of San Luis Obispo were running nearly 90 percent full. Still, the airline, a unit of AMR Corp. and feeder carrier for American Airlines, told Nairne it was losing money on the service.
The airport planned to spend $60 million on a new terminal and parking garage. Now both are in limbo, Nairne said, although she expects county supervisors will approve a scaled-down terminal.
"We have a number of businesses that depend on good air service," said David Garth, president of the San Luis Obispo chamber of commerce. "It's going to be much harder for us to convince a high-tech company that they should come here. It hurts."
Most U.S. airlines are cutting flights after the heavy summer travel season to reduce costs and drive up fares. They suffered big losses in the first six months of this year, largely because of a huge increase in jet fuel prices.
Leaders of dozens of airports, many of them smaller ones, were worried enough that they called an emergency strategy meeting last month in Washington. They heard politicians blame the airline industry's problems on inadequate U.S. oil production and oil-price speculators.
Relatively speaking, Dallas-Fort Worth is sitting pretty thanks to a stroke of only-in-Texas good luck — an energy company has already paid DFW more than $160 million to drill for natural gas beneath the airport, and royalties could boost the tab for years to come.
Even so, American and American Eagle will cut flights here beginning next month. Airport officials predict the number of passengers will decline more than 7 percent, to about 54 million in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, the smallest number in five years.
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