Toledo Express passenger business grows for 7th straight year
The increase was driven by higher traffic on Allegiant Air and a bump-up in charter flights.
By David Patch / The Blade
Wed, 22 Jan 2020 16:11:34 GMT
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Passenger travel through Toledo Express Airport increased for a seventh straight year during 2019 by 1.69 percent, according to year-end statistics released Wednesday by the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority.
The increase was driven by higher traffic on Allegiant Air and a bump-up in charter flights, while business on American Eagle’s two Toledo routes dipped slightly.
“The past seven years of continued growth proves there is a market for air travel in northwest Ohio,” Thomas Winston, the port authority’s president and chief executive, said in a statement announcing the figures. “Year after year, more residents continue to choose their local airport over others. The more we utilize the flights we have, the more airlines will continue to look at the Toledo market as a real contender to add new air service.”
American Eagle, which flies three daily roundtrips between Toledo and Chicago and two between Toledo and Charlotte, had the highest total passengers at Toledo Express, 131,267, during the year. Late in the year, however, it replaced 66-seat aircraft with 50-seat planes on one of the two Charlotte schedules. The year-end passenger total was 946 fewer than in 2018.
Joe Cappel, the port authority’s vice president for business development, said the slightly smaller plane with no first-class cabin was “kind of a trade-off” for a more favorable departure time for Toledo’s morning flight to Charlotte: 8:23 a.m. instead of 5 a.m.
Unlike the Chicago route, Toledo’s Charlotte route does not have an evening departure from Toledo. Mr. Cappel said that issue is raised from time to time with the airline.
“It’s always my message that you have to utilize what we have if we’re going to get more,” Mr. Cappel said. “We keep pushing for more air service, but a lot of airports are in the same boat now. Especially with the 737-MAX problems, there’s just not a lot of new capacity to add.”
Toledo flights were not directly affected by the Federal Aviation Administration order last year for airlines to park their Boeing 737-MAX aircraft after two control-related crashes overseas, but those planes’ groundings have thrown ripples through aircraft assignments and resulted in service cuts elsewhere. American has 24 737-MAX planes in its fleet.
Allegiant, meanwhile, flew 111,888 Toledo travelers to or from four Florida airports during 2019, a 4.27 percent increase over 2018.
That included 5,141 passengers on a new, seasonal Destin-Fort Walton Beach route that flew twice weekly between June 7 and Aug. 12. But while the new route ran nearly 70 percent full, it wasn’t enough for Allegiant, which said in December it would not resume the Destin flights in 2020.
Port officials hope that loss will be offset by continued growth on Allegiant’s other Toledo routes to Sanford, St. Petersburg, and Punta Gorda, Fla. The airline is increasing capacity on its Toledo routes during February, March, and April, according to the port authority. It also plans to fly three times weekly on the Sanford and St. Petersburg routes next summer, up from the twice-weekly service it has historically offered at Toledo outside of peak Florida tourism season.
Allegiant also plans to fly uninterrupted to St. Petersburg and Punta Gorda next fall, a time of year when those routes have gone on off-season hiatus in the past, the port’s statement said.
Chartered aircraft carried 2,234 passengers to and from the local airport during 2018, bringing the airport’s total passengers to 245,389, its highest total since 2008.
Before its current seven-year growth streak, Toledo Express endured a precipitous nine-year slide in both flight availability and passenger traffic that coincided with several major airline mergers that resulted in several Midwestern hubs being shut down, and sharply rising fuel prices that made the smaller jets typically assigned to markets like Toledo’s less economical to fly.