Sep. 29--TRAVERSE CITY -- Cherry Capital Airport has been busier this summer than ever before. Passenger traffic through the season outpaced all previous years, said airport Executive Director Kevin Klein.

The number of people who got on or off commercial flights at Cherry Capital totaled 397,296 by the end of August, a 14.1 percent increase.

Additional summer-only flights and larger airplanes contribute to the bump in traffic.

Another reason is that Cherry Capital offers fee waivers to sweeten the deal, Klein said.

Northwest Regional Airport Committee members Tuesday approved a new carrier incentive plan to waive all fees for Allegiant for two years, Klein said.

Those include landing and ramp fees, plus rental costs for operational and common space, and amount to an estimated $262,000 per year.

This approach is used for all new airlines at Cherry Capital.

"We do that for all carriers that would be brand-new to Cherry Capital Airport. We did that also with Elite," said Klein.

American, Delta and United also had fees waived for two years, he said.

Elite began year-round service to Florida early in 2019. Allegiant announced this summer that it will begin year-round nonstop service between Traverse City and Florida in October, and between Traverse City and Phoenix in November.

"The DOT gives us parameters on marketing incentives that we can offer," said Klein.

For more than a decade, waiving fees has been a popular strategy to attract new airline service to small- and medium-sized U.S. airports, according to the CAPA Centre for Aviation, a market intelligence service for the aviation and travel industries.

The Federal Aviation Administration devotes a section of its website to the Air Carrier Incentive Program. A 28-page handbook available on the site serves as a guide for airports that plan to use it.

At the end of the two initial years of the new service to Cherry Capital, normal fees kick in for each carrier.

"Then they'll start paying rent," Klein said.

Expansion plans

Cherry Capital airport is on a growth trajectory. It handled 500,416 passengers in 2018 and is on track to surpass that mark in 2019.

"We can keep growing, and we have plans to grow," Klein said.

A grant is funding a study on the best ways to expand the terminal so it can handle more passenger traffic.

"We're looking to go to a 12-gate facility from a six-gate facility," said Klein.

Cherry Capital now operates with two ground gates and four jet-bridge gates. The airport plans to add six additional jet-bridge gates, he said. Plans also are being explored for parking lot expansion.

More or less

The number of airline takeoffs and landings at Cherry Capital through August stood at 7,642, an 11.4 percent increase over 2018.

The rise in traffic comes as other airports are losing passengers. Flint, for example, has seen its air passenger numbers plummet in the last year.

"Flint's down 23.6 percent," through the end of August, Klein said.

Southwest Airlines pulled out of Flint last year in June.

"Flint used to do almost double the passengers that we did," said Klein. "Right now, for this year, we're only 242 passengers behind Flint."

"Lansing's down 6.1 percent. Manistee is down 3.3 percent. A lot of airports are down in Michigan," he said.

Michigan Department of Transportation's Aeronautics numbers puts Traverse City up 16.3 percent for the year though August.

Other northern Michigan airports are up, too. Pellston passenger numbers are up 16 percent through August, Escanaba 11.3 percent, Iron Mountain/Kingsford 7.9 percent, Grand Rapids 7.7 percent and Alpena 6.3 percent.

Cherry Capital has been gaining passengers for years.

"After the dip of the recession, we've grown 42 percent," said Klein.

Some regional airports like Aspen, Colorado, also have seen passenger traffic increases in recent years.

"We like to compare ourselves to Aspen," he said. "It's about the same type of market, but theirs is a winter peak, while ours is a summer peak."

Year-round changes

Summer delivers the most visible traffic increases to Cherry Capital.

But traffic in other seasons also contributes to the numbers.

"We've seen some growth in our year-round flights, both the Detroit and Chicago markets," said Klein.

As demand for flights into and out of Traverse City has grown, airlines have swapped in bigger planes.

American, Delta and United formerly flew regional jets with 66 or 74 seats most of the year, occasionally sending in larger 110-seat planes during the summer peak.

"We're starting to see those mainline aircraft carry longer into the shoulder seasons," Klein said.

Overall U.S. passenger traffic grew slightly this summer over last.

But tragedy -- a pair of fatal crashes -- led to the March 2019 grounding of the global fleet (387 aircraft) of Boeing 737 Max jets. Fewer planes in the air this summer translated into fewer passengers. It's still unclear when the 737 Max fleet will return to action.

"On a nationwide scale, the summer (traffic) grew," said Klein, "but it would have grown more if the 737 Max would not have been grounded."

Writer Jordan Travis contributed to this report.

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