Detroit Metro Airport Serves Fewer Fliers in 2002.
Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI) September 21, 2002 Byline: Daniel G. Fricker Sep. 21–The number of passengers at Detroit Metro Airport was down 9.2 percent through the first seven months of this year, mirroring a nationwide trend that shows millions of passengers have not returned to flying since the Sept. 11 attacks.
International passengers at Metro were down a whopping 31.6 percent.
More than 18.7 million passengers used Metro through the end of July, or 1.9 million fewer than during the same period in 2001, according to airport statistics released this week.
The airport’s major carrier, Northwest Airlines, experienced an 8.9-percent decrease in passengers at Metro. Northwest and its Airlink commuter service carry 76.6 percent of the airport’s passengers.
The decreases are close to the 10.7-percent year-to-year drop in passengers on the nation’s top 15 airlines through August of this year, according to the Air Transport Association of America, an airline industry trade group based in Washington, D.C. see here detroit metro airport
The numbers of passengers on the nation’s airlines plunged 36 percent year-to-year in September 2001 as a result of the economic slowdown and the terrorist attacks.
Passenger numbers rebounded during the winter and spring, but the recovery stalled last spring, ATA officials say.
Nonetheless, Metro spokesman Len Singer said airport officials are optimistic about Metro’s passenger count. “We’re encouraged that the numbers are steadily increasing, but obviously we’d like to see that happen even faster,” he said Friday. web site detroit metro airport
Singer pointed to Metro’s passenger numbers for June and July. They were down 6.9 percent and 6.3 percent respectively compared to the same months in 2001.
But he declined to predict when Metro’s passenger traffic could rebound to numbers seen before the attacks.
“You can’t discount the factors of the economy,” Singer said. “Until the economy bounces back, I don’t think we’ll see a complete bounce back in the industry either.” Northwest Airlines declined to comment on when its passenger numbers at Metro could recover.
The number of passengers on the nation’s airlines is expected to dip again in 2003, by 1.5 percent compared to this year, said Mike Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting company in Evergreen, Colo.
“The nation doesn’t pull out of the dive until the end of 2003,” he said. “There is no way it can. You have all the major airlines taking capacity out at the end of this year. What that means is we’re going to have less seats, less people.” But Detroit is expected to buck the national trend. In 2003, the number of passengers at Metro is expected to grow year-to-year by up to 2 percent, Boyd said. The reasons are the 97-gate midfield terminal, which opened Feb. 24, and the growth of Spirit Airlines, a discount carrier that is Metro’s second-largest airline.
But Metro is not expected to rebound to passenger numbers recorded in 2000 — the last year before the economic slowdown — until 2005.
“That has to do more with airlines’ capacity than there being anything wrong with Detroit,” Boyd said.
