HIGHFILL, Ark. — More Northwest Arkansas travelers booked flights with Northwest Arkansas National Airport (XNA) in Highfill last year instead of opting to fly from other airports in the region, according to a new study. XNA officials attributed the rise to leisure travelers taking advantage of lower fares.
Volaire Aviation Consulting recently released the Traffic Retention and Leakage Study for 2019 that shows a 7.8-percentage point rise in travelers in XNA’s catchment area who booked their flights with XNA rather than with other airports. The catchment area includes 142 ZIP codes in Northwest Arkansas, northeast Oklahoma and southwest Missouri, and XNA captured 73.7% of the market in 2019, up from 65.9% in 2018.
Leakage refers to the travelers in the catchment area who travel using competing airports, and the largest share of leakage (10.4%) went to Tulsa International Airport. In 2018, the airport captured a 16.8% share of the travelers in XNA’s catchment area. In 2019, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport captured the next largest share at 3.8%, up from 3.6% in 2018.
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