Passengers are flying more and more from CWA. Airline ticket prices are coming down and flight schedules are better than ever. For the first half of 2019, passenger numbers have grown by over 15 percent at the Central Wisconsin Airport! At this rate, the airport could see nearly 300,000 passengers this year, a number that hasn’t been seen since before the Great Recession of 2008. This growth is great news for the communities of central Wisconsin. As the total available seats fill up, the airlines will add more seats and potentially more destinations out of CWA. This growth will also drive airline ticket prices down even further.
So what’s the reason for this? Well, in addition to lower prices and better airline schedules, there are more people flying out of our entire “catchment area”. A catchment area is simply a geographic boundary of what airport you’re closest to. Our catchment area is shown in blue. In 2015, this catchment area produced 516,086 passengers. Last year, there were 578,772 passengers. This year that number will be even higher.
The passengers in the catchment area use CWA approximately 40 percent of the time. The other 60 percent of the time travelers choose to travel long distances to other airports such as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Increasing our passenger retention would certainly add additional destinations our community wants, such as Denver, Dallas, or Atlanta.
With this growth, the airport is experiencing “big city” challenges. Now, passengers need to show up at least 90 minutes before their flights. This is especially true for the the early morning departures between 5:30 am and 7:30 am. Daily, in one hour of the morning, our friends at TSA are tasked with screening nearly 200 passengers. The technology they are provided cannot screen more than 150 passengers per hour. The result of this math problem are wait-times. TSA has provided the following recommendations to make traveling easier:
