Passenger boardings at Tupelo Regional Airport dropped 15 percent for the second month in a row, but airport officials insist it's far too early to sound the alarm.
Boardings dropped 15 percent in June from the same month a year earlier, when it had added a second air service, ASA/Delta Connection, a connector for Delta Air Lines. That decline was the first at Tupelo Regional in nearly two years.
But, as airport Executive Director Terry Anderson pointed out, a drop in capacity has led to the drop in numbers.
"If you have more seats available, you have more fliers," he said. When Delta began service last year, it had three daily direct flights between Tupelo and Atlanta. That dropped to two in June.
Also, Mesaba, the carrier for Northwest Airlines, has adjusted its three daily flights to Memphis. While they are still "direct" flights, they aren't dedicated to Tupelo only.
That means two of the flights actually originate in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and stop in Tupelo before going to Memphis. Passengers do not go though Muscle Shoals in order to get to Memphis, however.
Northwest was down 17 percent in July and Delta was down 11 percent.
Despite the downturn, July's boardings were still the second-highest for the month in the airport's history. And for the year, the 18,686 boardings have already exceeded the full-year totals for six of the past 10 years.
Copyright 2005 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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