Passenger counts were up at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport in September and October, but the year-to-date traffic is flat at 622,085 total passengers, the airport says in a news release.
Enplanements, or departing passengers, increased 6.98% and 4.43%, respectively, for the two months, the airport says. Deplanements, or arriving passengers, were up 4.03% in September and 12.29% in October.
“The flood and subsequent flight cancellations due to the curfew adversely impacted our August passenger count, but we have recovered nicely,” says Ralph Hennessy, the airport’s interim director of aviation. Hennessy took over after longtime director Anthony Marino stepped down in October.
Hennessy says the airport is pleased with the back-to-back increases.
With less expensive airfares and direct flights luring local commercial travelers to the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, the Baton Rouge airport has struggled with finding ways to increase its passenger counts. The airport even unveiled a strategic plan last year that focuses on growing its business travel segment of the market.
In 2015, though, BTR saw a roughly 4% drop in passengers, with one administrator previously telling Daily Report the decline is attributed to a decrease in seating capacity.
But Hennessy now says increases in seating capacity, including United’s upgrades to larger, dual-class Embraer 170/75 jets for some flights, resulted in the September and October increases.
“The BTR load factors have been high; we just needed additional seats,” he says. “Our current flight schedules for November and December also include a slight increase in seating capacity, which we hope will result in year-over-year passenger growth.”
The cancellation rate for all BTR commercial flight departures was only 1.6% through July, the news release says. But the August percentage reached 8.5% due to the flood and curfew-related cancellations.
Delta Air Lines has the top BTR market share year-to-date at 40%, followed by American Airlines at 35% and United Airlines at 25%, the news release says.
