The travel industry has been one of the most impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and will likely see lasting effects, but Clinton National Airport Executive Director Bryan Malinowski gave an optimistic report of where the airport currently is in its rebound status.
The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport is the largest airport in the state, serving as an economic engine for the region.
"The airport sits on about 2,200 acres, and there's about 2,000 jobs that are conducted in the airport each year," Malinowski told Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club members Wednesday.
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"Prior to COVID, the state had a report that came out that showed our economic impact of about $1.6 billion per year."
In addition to the economic impact, being one of nine commercial service airports out of 512 that are debt-free in the country, LIT does not take fees or taxes from the state or local cities to run its day-to-day operations.
While being financially sound gets kudos from Arkansas, it also played a major factor in the airport's success when COVID-19 entered the picture and took the airport that carried about 2.4 billion passengers per year down by 93%, he said.
"You can imagine, with 7% of our traffic moving through the airport it was a ghost town," Malinowski said. "Nobody was traveling. At that time, we were averaging about 13 people per flight. I actually had more staff in the building than I did on flights."
But things didn't remain bleak. Today, in its rebound, LIT is seeing 60% of the passengers it had prior to the pandemic. While this percentage increases monthly, Malinowski does not expect it to return to 100% since businesses have found their "new normal" in less travel and more virtual meetings.
The airport currently sees 65% of its passengers traveling for leisure, and that percentage is expected to increase in the summer months.
So the good news is air travel is coming back with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcing fully vaccinated passengers can safely travel, but the bad news is airfare is also seeing an increase.
The pandemic reduced LIT's number of daily departing flights from 42 to 31, and fewer seats mean higher fare until the number of departing flights increase.