Cleveland Could Get Air Service to Ireland

Non-stop airline service to Europe may return to Cleveland Hopkins Airport next year if local officials agree to a financial package.

The Plain Dealer reported on Friday that Aer Lingus is poised to launch flights between Cleveland and Dublin four times a week as early as next May.

It would be the first direct service from Hopkins to Europe since Icelandair and WOW Air ended service to Reykjaveik in 2018.

The Cleveland City Council is reportedly ready to vote on a $600,000 incentive package that would last two years.

That would be part of a larger package totaling between $2 million to $2.9 million that is being assembled by the economic development agency Team NEO.

Other contributions are expected to come from Cuyahoga County and various local businesses.

The funding would not be grants but instead would be revenue guarantees design to help a carrier pay for the costs of starting a new route. Federal law prohibits direct subsidy payments for air service.

The Plain Dealer reported noted that in 2019 Aer Lingus considered offering flights between Cleveland and Dublin, but the local business community could not agree on funding incentives for the service.

Restarting direct service from Cleveland to Europe has been a top priority for Hopkins officials for years.

Before the Iceland service ended in 2018, Continental Airline flew between Cleveland and London and for one summer between Cleveland and Paris. The last of those services, Cleveland-London, ended in 2009.

Hopkins has daily international service to Toronto by an Air Canada contract carrier and various less-than-daily services operate from Cleveland to Cancun, Mexico.

In 2020, JobsOhio, established a program to help the state’s airports attract new air service.

One result of those efforts was the coming  of Breeze Airways to Akron-Canton Airport last year.

JobsOhio and Team NEO also created a package to entice Alaska Airlines to begin service from Cleveland to Seattle this year.

That service includes one daily flight with a second summer season flight expected to launch next year.

Hopkins Scores Low Among Medium Airports

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport recently scored the dubious distinction of being rated the third worst medium-sized airport for traveler satisfaction.

The survey was conducted by consulting firm J.D. Power and rated airports in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh the top two respectively.

A medium-sized airport is defined as handling 4.5 million to 9.9 million passengers annually.

Ranking below Hopkins were Hollywood Burbank Airport in California and Kahului Airport in Hawaii. There are 18 medium-sized airports in the United States.

The J.D. Power survey queried travelers on such factors as terminal facilities, baggage claim, and food and beverage options.

The consulting firm noted in announcing its results that overall customer satisfaction declined in 2022 amid airline staff shortages, flight cancellations, fare hikes, and lack of suitable parking at airports.

Michael Taylor of J.D. Power said travelers groused about crowded airport terminals and rising prices for everything from jet fuel to a bottle of water at an airport newsstand.

More than half of the respondents (58 percent) described airport terminals as severely or moderately crowded. A quarter said they avoided food and beverage purchases because of the expense.

Despite its ranking third from the bottom, Taylor told The Plain Dealer that Hopkins was one of the few airports to see an improvement in its scores from 2021 to 2022 with its score improving from 772 to 780 out of a possible 1,000 points.

In the past year Hopkins officials have overseen improvements in security screening and airport access.

The Plain Dealer report said Hopkins has increasingly ranked below its medium-sized peers in recent years on traveler satisfaction scores.

In the mega airports category of more than 32 million passengers a year, Minneapolis-St. Paul, San Francisco and Detroit airports were the top three with the bottom three being Los Angeles, Chicago O’Hare and Newark.

In the large airport category (10 million to 32.9 million passengers annually), Tampa, John Wayne (California) and Dallas Love were the top three, while Kansas City, Honolulu and Philadelphia were the bottom three.

Hopkins Parking Lots Are Full Many Days

With all of its parking lots routinely filled in recent weeks, officials at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport plan to reopen the remote Brown Lot in early May.

Airport director Robert Kennedy told The Plain Dealer that the parking squeeze was due to a faster than expected demand for air travel this spring.

The airport has resurfaced and repainted the Brown lot, which is located north of the terminal. It has 500 spaces and charges $11 per day, the least expensive parking option at Hopkins.

An airport-operated shuttle service connects the Brown lot with the terminal.

Even privately owned airport parking lots along Snow Road have been at or near capacity in recent weeks.

Air travel at Hopkins this past March was 91 percent of what it was during the same month in 2019 a year before the onset of the COVID-19 sent air travel spiraling downward.

On March 25, Hopkins saw 32,000 passengers, the highest single-day number since Oct. 25, 2019.

Airport officials said the pandemic also has dramatically reduced the number of passengers who reach the airport via such ride sharing services as Uber and Lyft.

They attribute that to reluctance by many travelers to share space with strangers, a byproduct of the pandemic.

The airport operates five parking lots with prices ranging from $15 to $20 per day with a combined 6,350 spaces.

A repair project to the Smart Garage at the airport has led to the closing off of 200 spaces that won’t be available until late 2022.

A small surface lot next to the garage has been transformed from public parking to employee-only parking.

Kennedy acknowledged the airport lost revenue by taking those spaces out of public parking inventory.

He said most airport workers park off site and ride a shuttle to the terminal. Without elaborating he said the spaces in the employee-only lot were created due to an operational need.

In a related development, the airport may creating additional parking on the site of the current Sheraton Cleveland Airport Hotel.

The Plain Dealer reported the hotel is millions of dollars in debt and faces closure later this year.

The hotel owner, LN Hospitality, has missed making rent and other payments to the city, according to court documents and it defaulted on a $12.5 million loan from an Arkansas bank that has since filed a lawsuit against the hotel owner.

The hotel remains open for business but its occupancy has fallen dramatically since Hopkins lost its status as a hub operation for Continental and later United Airlines.

Both carriers used the hotel to put up flight crews and travelers stranded between flights.

The hotel, which opened in 1959 and was expanded in 1972, has 243 available rooms and a 468-space parking lot.

Cleveland city inspectors last November “identified numerous maintenance, safety and deficient care issues of the hotel,” according to court documents.

The Hopkins master plan envisions the land on which the hotel is located being used for additional parking.

Airlines Face Higher Costs at Hopkins

The airlines serving Cleveland Hopkins Airport are about to face a double squeeze.

Airport authorities said this week that the airlines will pay higher fees so the airport can make up for lost revenue from parking, food service, retail operations and other non-aeronautical functions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The airport also is expecting the airlines to underwrite much of the cost of a new terminal being planning although that project is still years away from launching.

Hopkins already has some of the highest airline fees in the country, in part because of its high debt levels.

Speaking to the Cleveland City Council’s Finance Committee, airport director Robert Kennedy acknowledged that the higher airline fees come at a bad time.

Commercial air traffic at Hopkins hit 10 million in 2019 but plunged to 4.1 million last year as the pandemic decimated the air travel market.

Hopkins expects to handle 5.2 million passengers in 2021, a figure that is 48 percent of the 2019 total.

Kennedy said the airport’s 2021 budget of $151.5 million must be balanced by increasing airline fees because the airport is not allowed to dip into city tax dollars.

Whereas airline fees funded 46 percent of the airport’s costs in 2019, this year that is expected to increase by $21 million and to account for 66 percent of the airport’s revenue.

Last year the airlines paid an average cost per passenger of $32, a figure expected to go even higher in 2021.

By contrast per passenger costs at airports in Columbus, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati are expected to range from $10 to $15.

“We are damaging our competitiveness,” Kennedy said. “This is what drives airlines elsewhere.”

At $645 million Hopkins has a higher debt load than Columbus ($172 million) and Pittsburgh ($43 million).

Cleveland’s debt stems largely from building a new runway two decades ago.

Debt service this year at Hopkins is expected to be more than $65 million or 43 percent of the airport’s budget.

As for the new terminal, airport officials are still working on a plan but envision it being largely a modification of the existing terminal with construction occurring in stages.

The more than $1 billion new terminal is expected to have wider concourses; an expanded ticketing area; a relocated rental car facility; centralized Transportation Security Administration screening; a new, centrally-located Customs facility; and redesigned entry roads.

Airline fees are expected to pay the bulk of the cost and Kennedy acknowledged negotiations with the carriers over fees will be tough.

“The financing of this is going to be a difficult lift in a post-COVID environment,” Kennedy said.

Airport officials have not released a timeline for when construction will begin and how long it will last but the start of work is several years away.

In the past, most airline passengers at Hopkins were passing through, making flight connections when the airport was a hub for Continental Airlines and, later, United Airlines.

Since United closed the Cleveland hub in June 2014 travel patterns at Hopkins have transformed into the majority of travelers beginning or ending their trips there.

That resulted pre-pandemic in parking shortages and overcrowding in some areas of the airport.

Hopkins Traffic Down 59% in 2020

As expected 2020 figures for commercial passenger traffic at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport took a deep dive due to the COVID-19 pandemic depressing the air travel market.

Airport officials said 4.1 million passengers used Hopkins last year, a sharp downturn from the previous year when 10.04 million boarded or deplaned at the airport.

The 2020 figures were by far the lowest of the past decade when the previous low was 7.61 million handled in 2014.

Although airline traffic at Hopkins in 2020 was down 59 percent, that was not as bad as the national average of 62 percent based on travel through October, the latest month for which figures are available from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The worst month at Hopkins in 2020 was April when it handled 30,149 passengers, a decline of more than 96% from April 2019.

The best month was December when the airport saw 333,526 passengers. That was still a 59 decrease from the year before.

In looking ahead, Cleveland airport officials expect traffic at Hopkins this year of between 5.2 million and 6 million.

Industry observers are expecting it will take three to four years before air travel rebuilds to 2019 levels. That won’t happen until business travel, which has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, begins to pick up.

In the meantime, leisure travel has been a significant chunk of the current air travel market and Florida is among the most popular destinations with several carriers flying hundreds of passengers there every day from Cleveland.

Holiday Fares, Direct Destinations to be lower at Hopkins This Year

Holiday season air fares from Cleveland Hopkins Airport are expected to be lower but the number of non-stop destinations will be nearly half as many as there were last year.

A travel industry consultant told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland that the average air fare from Hopkins for the Thanksgiving travel season will be $148 roundtrip while the average fare during the Christmas travel season is projected to be $173 roundtrip.

Those figures do not include fees for such things as checked baggage.

Those projections are 45 percent lower than the average fare last year for Thanksgiving travel and 48 percent less than last year for Christmas season travel.

Nationwide, the average fares for Thanksgiving and Christmas travel are expected to be $172 and $222 roundtrip respectively, which are 41 percent and 40 percent lower than 2019 averages.

The consultant told the newspaper that fares are lower this year because airlines are trying to lure back passengers who stopped traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fares are unlikely to change much between now and the holiday travel seasons, the consultant said.

Based on schedules for November already posted by the eight carriers serving Hopkins, there will be 29 nonstop destinations next month compared with 42 in November 2019.

Among the missing destinations are Washington Reagan National, New York Kennedy, Milwaukee, West Palm Beach (Florida), Salt Lake City, Austin (Texas), and Charleston (South Carolina).

United Airlines plans to end service next month between Cleveland and San Francisco, but has announced it will add flights to the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers and Orlando.

It will also launch service to Cancun in Mexico. JetBlue has also launched new service between Cleveland and Fort Myers to supplement its existing flights to Fort Lauderdale.

Hopkins had 4,018 commercial flights in November 2019 but expects to see 2.099 this November.

Seven of the eight airlines serving Cleveland have one or more suspended destinations that they served in November 2019.

A ninth carrier, an Air Canada partner carrier, has yet to resume service to Toronto.

The most recent figures available from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics show Hopkins handled 315,149 passengers in August, a decline of 66 percent from August 2019. Nationwide, air travel was down 70 percent in August.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said it screened more than 1 million travelers on Oct. 18, the first time its daily screenings topped the million mark since last March.

However, those 1 million passengers screened was still 60 percent how many passed through security checkpoints nationwide on the same date a year ago.

Hopkins Officials Eye 3 Options For Airport Terminal Development

Three plans have emerged for the future of the terminal at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, ranging from a new terminal to renovating the existing structure.

The options were discussed last week at a public hearing although officials said there is no assurance that any of the options will be implemented.

Nonetheless airport officials said during the hearing that the airport needs more ticketing and gate space, additional parking, more efficient and larger security and customs areas, better roadway access, and an on-site car rental facility.

The new terminal proposal would use the existing terminal’s footprint but involve two parallel buildings connected via an underground tunnel.

A second proposal would keep the existing terminal largely intact but lengthen concourse B, widen concourse C and reopen concourse D.

The third option would be to keep keep Concourse A but replace concourses B, C and D.

The next step in the planning process is to narrow the options to a preferred alternative and conduct studies of how to fund the project.

Officials did not say how much the options would cost but a new terminal would be expected to cost more than $1 billion.

During the hearing, consultants discussed options for improving airport access.

Among the proposals are rerouting Ohio Route 237, also known as the Berea Freeway, and creating a new elevated exit for the airport from Interstate 71 at Snow Road.

The consultants also recommended that the airport do a better job of enforcing limits on how long vehicles can wait on the lower level of the terminal to pick up arriving travelers.

Their report said the average wait time of five minutes is creating congestion. The average wait time at airports of similar size is three minutes.

“The problem is not how much curb [space] there is but how efficiently it is managed and how well the public obeys [the rules],” said Owen Curtis of Curtis Transportation Consulting.

Hopkins Satisfaction Improves, But Still Puts it Among Nation’s Least Popular Airports

Although traveler satisfaction with Cleveland Hopkins Airport has risen, it remains rated among the worst airports for its size according to a survey made by marketing firm J.D. Power.

Hopkins improved its score in the annual survey from 755 to 786 but that placed it third from the bottom among medium-sized airport, which handle 4 million to 9.9 million passengers annually.

The highest potential score is 1,000. In 2020 the average score for all airports was 784.

The top-rated airport in the medium category was Indianapolis with Pittsburgh also ranking in the top five.

The J.D. Power survey was conducted from October 2019 through July 2020, meaning it covered the period during which air travel plunged due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Cleveland would have been ranked as a “large” airport based on its 2019 passenger totals of 10 million.

A spokesman for J.D. Power said the rankings are planned far in advance and thus don’t use the most up-to-date passenger numbers.

Had Cleveland been rated as a large airport it would have ranked 17^th out of 28 airports.

Michael Taylor, travel intelligence lead at J.D. Power, said North America’s top-rated airports have in common an open, airy experience that feels more like a well-designed shopping mall than an airport.

“These airports also do a good job of conveying local flavor in their passenger experience, from food and beverage offerings that feature regional specialties to design cues that evoke local color,” he said.

Among the largest airports, which handled 33 million or more passengers a year, Phoenix ranked first and Newark last. Among large airports (10 million to 32.9 million passengers annually), Dallas Love Field ranked best and New York LaGuardia ranked worst.

In an unrelated development, Cleveland officials said the announced closing of the International Exposition Center at the airport is expected to mean a loss of more than $2 million to the airport.

I-X Center Corporation, which leased the exposition center from the city, had been paying $2 million in annual rent.

The company renting the I-X Center said it would close the facilities due to a collapse of business following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Hopkins Users Give Wish List for Airport Improvements in Master Plan Revision Hearings

Users of Cleveland Hopkins Airport last week gave their wish lists of improvements they want to see at the airport.

Those include additional parking, improvements to the roadways into the airport, wider concourses, more use of public transportation to the airport, a better location for rental cars, fewer security checkpoints, and improvements to the U.S. Customs facilities.

Those were among the wishes expressed by those responding to the first public hearing to be held as part of the process of revising the airport’s master plan.

Some, all or none of those recommendations will ultimately be adopted and those that are accepted will take years to implement.

The airport has hired a Florida consulting firm to oversee the rewriting of the master plan.

Airport Director Robert Kennedy said during last week’s hearing that the future of the unused Concourse D remains unresolved.

It was built in 1999 for smaller aircraft that supported the hub operations of Continental Airlines.

But that hub was closed in 2014 when the Cleveland hub was shut down by United Airlines, which had acquired Continental in 2010.

Kennedy described Concourse D as a “distressed asset” because it was designed to accommodate smaller planes, many of which no longer use Hopkins.

The airport director said Cleveland is unlikely to become a hub airport again and officials said the downturn in international travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic means that it is likely to be some time before Cleveland lands a nonstop flight to Europe.

The pandemic has depressed air traffic at Hopkins and officials said it may take at least three to four years to recover.

Hopkins handled 10 million passengers in 2019 but is expected to see far less than that this year. The consulting firm projects traffic will reach 11 million to 13 million by 2029.

In the meantime, the airport has begun work on a new ground transportation center located north of the terminal for passengers to board shuttle buses to off-site hotels and parking lots.

The facility will include covered seating areas, wider walking areas and be heated. It is expected to open in November.

In a related development, American Airlines said it will launch Saturday-only service between Cleveland and Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on Nov. 7.

It will be the second time American has flown the route, having dropped it about four years ago. Frontier and Southwest also fly between the two cities.

American plans to operate a 160-seat Boeing 737-800 on the route and it aiming at leisure travelers with flights departing Cleveland at 10:45 a.m. and returning at 8:05 p.m.

Air Travel at Hopkins Up in July

Airline travel was up 53 percent in July at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport over what it was in June but still well below 2019 levels.

During July 320,800 used Hopkins, many of them leisure travelers. A year ago that figure was 971,000.

This past June Hopkins saw 209,000 travelers. Airport director Robert Kennedy now expects Hopkins to handle 4.1 million passengers for 2020.

That’s well below his predictions early this year that the airport would break last year’s mark of 10.04 million.

Of course Kennedy made that prediction before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has severely depressed airline travel around the world.

In an unrelated development, a Cleveland-based airline said this week it will stop flying on Sept. 30 after its agreement with United Airlines expires.

ExpressJet said the move will affect the jobs of 75 mechanics working at Hopkins. The carrier had earlier this year relocated out of Cleveland hundreds of pilots and flight attendants.

Flying under the United Express banner, ExpressJet got its start as a contract carrier for Continental Airlines, which had a hub in Cleveland.

United has decided to shift its United Express brand flights from ExpressJet to CommutAir, a carrier based in North Olmsted. Both carriers fly 50-seat Embraer 145 regional jets.