"Baltimore Airport Reports July Passenger Traffic Neared Pre-Sept. 11 Levels"

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Baltimore Airport Reports July Passenger Traffic Neared Pre-Sept. 11 Levels
The Baltimore (MD) Sun


Nearly 2 million passengers flew out of Baltimore-Washington International
Airport in July, the most since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and
nearly matching pre-attack levels -- a performance that prompted airport
officials to declare that business was returning to normal.

Some 1.99 million people passed through BWI in July, up 9 percent from a
year earlier and just 28,882 shy of the number of passengers logged in July
2001.

"The public is getting accustomed to traveling again," Paul J. Wiedefeld,
executive director of the Maryland Aviation Administration, which oversees
BWI, said yesterday. "For the rest of the year, there will be a progression
back toward normalcy." Nationally, travel is up, but remains below the
pre-Sept. 11 level, according to airline statistics.

Wiedefeld said BWI's strong July performance indicated that people who had
shunned air travel following the attacks and during the subsequent economic
recession were flying again. He also credited discount carriers such as
Southwest Airlines, the airport's largest, and AirTran Airways, whose low
fares have lured travelers to BWI and forced major airlines to match many of
the reduced ticket prices.

Southwest, which marks 10 years at the airport Sept. 15, now offers 156
flights a day from BWI, up from eight in 1993. Close to half of the
airport's July passengers flew on the airline, which has remained profitable
through the industry tailspin that put some other carriers in bankruptcy.

David Swierenga, an industry consultant for Vienna, Va.-based AeroEcon, said
BWI's performance is not surprising, considering it's a Southwest hub.

Low-fare carriers in general have been growing in recent years and now
control about a quarter of the market, he said. And Southwest has been
credited with reversing a three-year decline in passengers at BWI and
turning the airport into a significant East Coast player.

Though BWI's passenger levels dropped following the attacks two years ago,
it lost less business than many other airports.

Although Swierenga pointed to a number of factors that contributed to the
slump in air travel, passenger growth was likely to continue, possibly
propelling the industry into the black next year, he said.

"There have been so many things besetting the airline industry, it's hard to
isolate anything and say that's over with. There's been Sept. 11, a war, a
protracted slump in the economy and SARS. About the only thing that hasn't
befallen the airline industry is locusts, so it's a little hard to say
what's causing the slowdown in demand for air travel today." 

That demand, however, is creeping back.

Nationally, there were about 49.2 million passengers in July, down about 1
percent from the year before and still significantly down from the 55.4
million passengers in July 2001, according to the Air Transport Association,
an airline trade group.

The low fares have helped BWI more than other airports, said David S.
Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association.

That's because the economy, he said, appears to be the overriding factor in
the decision to travel or not.

"There's no question that BWI is the low-fare capital of the mid-Atlantic
states," he said. "It will continue to draw passengers from the entire
region." BWI, however, has been feeling the impact of new security
procedures that have produced long lines at terminal checkpoints.

BWI's Wiedefeld said he expects the federal Transportation Security
Administration, which oversees screeners, to add staff by the Thanksgiving
rush.

"That should make things a lot easier," he said.


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