Air Travel Up at CAK in July

Air travel from Akron-Canton Airport ticked up in July although air travel generally nationwide appeared to hit a plateau that month.

Lisa Dalpiaz, the airport’s director of marketing and air service development, said during July the airport averaged 250 to 440 passengers per day who used the eight flights a day serving the airport located near Green.

Normal passenger traffic for July would be 2,000 a day, she said. However, CAK is still seeing far more passengers than it did early in the pandemic when it averaged 30 passengers per day using three daily flights.

Although passenger levels and the number of flights at Akron-Canton are well below those of 2019, an industry consulting firm issued a recent report posted on the website of Airport World that showed CAK is doing well in passengers per flight when compared to Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

The firm, Crawford, Murphy & Tilly, said data from Airline Data, Incorporated, shows CAK is processing 0.8-0.9 passengers through airport security checkpoints for each seat, while Hopkins is processing 0.6-0.7 passengers per seat.

The report acknowledged that this data is not directly comparable to a traditional load factor metric but does give an indication of how many local passengers are boarding flights.

Air traffic nationwide was down 65.3 percent in June from the levels of 2019 and was down 74 percent in July.

In the meantime, Dalpiaz said that by September the number of flights using Akron-Canton is expected to rise to 17 per day with the number of destinations also increasing.

Currently the airport has service to Charlotte, Philadelphia, Chicago O’Hare, and Orlando.

Before the pandemic it also had service to New York (LaGuardia), Washington (Reagan National), Newark, Atlanta, and Houston, and seasonal service to Tampa and Fort Myers.

The Newark service had been slated to end in May in favor of flights to Washington Dulles Airport.

American Eagle and Spirit airlines have begun operations in the airport’s expanded two-level concourse.

Old gates are being razed as part of a $34 million gate expansion project.

Dalpiaz said the airport will hold a dedication for the new gates once the demolition of the older gates is completed.

The airport recently received a $1.13 million Federal Aviation Administration grant that includes funding for a new snow plow to replace one that dates to 1997.

The new plow will cost $423,000. The grant will also be used to fund a service road, paving runways and taxiways, and installing a wind cone.

Tags: airline service, airline service in Northeast Ohio, Akron-Canton Airport, American Eagle, Northeast Ohio airports, Spirit Airlines