Airport numbers climb 6% with 1.26M passengers
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Huntsville International Airport had its busiest year on record in 2005 - with more than 1.26 million passengers.
That's up by 71,783 passengers, or 6 percent, over 2004, the previous record-breaking year for passengers.
Rick Tucker, the airport's executive director, is optimistic that the airport will continue to have strong traffic despite the shutdown last week of its only low-fare carrier, Independence Air.
Airport executives say the steady climb in traffic over the past two years is a result of more competitive airfares in Huntsville, higher gas prices for drivers and an e-mail program launched early last year, called Huntsville Hot Ticket. The program alerts travelers about the lowest fares to top destinations. There are now 27,673 subscribers to that program.
"We feel good about our market, especially the business market," Tucker said after a meeting of the Huntsville/Madison County Airport Authority. "That's growing." With thousands of defense jobs being relocated to Redstone Arsenal as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, "that's certainly going to be a plus for our community. Our community continues to grow - not just Huntsville/Madison County, but the (18-county) region that we serve."
The leisure traveler is much more sensitive to airfares, said Tucker, and "we're continuing to monitor fares to ensure we remain competitive with Birmingham and Nashville" airports.
Tucker and Barbie Peek, the airport's director of marketing, visited with a potential airline last month and have a meeting scheduled with another carrier this month. One of the carriers is an established airline, while the other is a low-cost airline, Tucker said.
At the International Intermodal Center, there were 34,411 rail cargo lifts last year, making 2005 the fourth consecutive year of record-setting performance at the facility. The center, located off Wall-Triana Highway, receives, transfers and distributes plane, train and truck cargo.
There were 3,482 rail lifts in December, a 58 percent increase over the lifts in December 2004, said Mitch Bradley, the center's director. That's the center's highest lift volume on record for the month of December and the highest lift volume for a single month since the center opened in 1986.
"We're becoming an import nation," said Bradley, with U.S. railroads and ports seeing record volumes.
In other business, the authority authorized the sale of up to $20 million in airport revenue bonds to the underwriter, Merchant Capital L.L.C. The money is to be used to add 1,300 more spaces to the existing 1,600-space deck.
Tucker informed the authority that airport officials have chosen not to obtain specialized terrorism insurance coverage because of its expense and the limitations of the coverage.
Congress has sent President Bush a bill that extends by two years a post-9/11 law providing federal insurance backup for catastrophic losses suffered in a terrorist attack. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act expired at the end of 2005.
© 2006 The Huntsville Times
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