Des Moines airport update: Passenger numbers down, prices up, seats more scarce
At least temporarily, it’s getting tougher to get a seat on a plane at the Des Moines airport, especially a cheap one.
Kevin Foley, the airport’s executive director and general manager, said the number of flights has dropped, as has the number of seats available. For the first time in three years, July’s passenger count was down 1 percent. The July passenger count was 209,258, down from 211,368 the same month last year.
For the year, the number of passengers is up 0.8 percent, but the airport needs better than 3 percent annual growth to build a proposed new terminal. Foley said he is confident the airport will approach 3 percent for this year, and over the long term.
Year-to-date, Foley said, Omaha’s passenger traffic is up 0.2 percent. At Kansas City, where Spirit Airlines has added five new destinations, the passenger count is up 3.5 percent.
Foley said the airlines will be adding about 2.5 percent more seats to the mix this fall, which should help.
But those added passengers still might face high ticket prices.
Despite falling fuel prices, tickets in Des Moines are commanding higher prices, Foley said. “Ticket prices are going up, even though fuel, the No. 1 cost for an airline, is going down,” Foley said. “That is the lack of competition.”
He couldn’t provide specific data on the increases, but said the difference is obvious to anyone who has bought a ticket lately.
Foley looks for the seat crunch to ease in the fall, when Delta Air Lines adds a flight to Salt Lake City.
Foley has been lobbying airlines to add a number of other flights, including service to St. Louis, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Detroit and several markets in Florida. “We can’t grow if we don’t have more seats,” he said.
Meanwhile, Des Moines airport officials continue to fear that airlines’ move to bigger planes will mean fewer flights on existing routes eventually.
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