Passenger numbers continue to soar at Worcester Regional Airport after record 2023 year

WORCESTER — It is the beginning of a bustling and sunny Thursday afternoon at Worcester Regional Airport with a flight from Fort Lauderdale arriving. Far from the COVID-era drop in flights, the airport has seen a climb in customers.

"In 2023, we exceeded 2019 numbers," Andrew Davis, the director of Worcester Regional Airport, said. "We had over 204,000 passengers fly in and out of Worcester in 2023. We made an all-time record back in July with an all-time number of passengers since Massport took ownership of the airport."

The airport also expects to replicate the strong summer passenger numbers this year.

"The trend is growing, and the demand is growing," Davis said.

More than a year ago on April 2023, JetBlue announced it would be adding two Florida routes to Orlando and Fort Myers at the airport while phasing out its New York City route. Davis said both routes have proven popular.

The flights offered at Worcester Regional Airport have remained consistent since last April.

The Fort Myers route is a seasonal service that began in January and lasts through the rest of April. Davis said the flights have consistently had load factors, a measurement of the percentage of available seating capacity filled by passengers, in the range of 80% to the mid-80s. The load factor jumped to the mid-90s during school vacation week.

With the Fort Myers route, Davis said the airport has seen 38% more passengers flying in and out of Worcester compared to the first quarter of 2023, and a 60% increase in March compared to March 2023.

The Fort Myers route will return in November and run through April 2025. After the first year of the Fort Myers trip being offered, JetBlue is able to schedule flights at the start of season travel in November. Davis said he hopes the popularity will show JetBlue that the flight to Fort Myers from Worcester can potentially work year-round.

The flights to Orlando are a resurrection of a route that was stopped during the pandemic.

All of the airlines now fly bigger planes through the Worcester airport than they did before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Davis said. JetBlue also phased out the planes that have 100 seats at Worcester Regional Airport, for planes with 162 seats. American Airlines and Delta moved from planes with 50 seats to ones with 75 and 76 seats, respectively.

Passengers can still purchase tickets for flights at the airport to New York City through Delta's flights to John F. Kennedy International Airport and American Airlines' flights to LaGuardia Airport.

Davis said the slow recovery of the market for business flights led to a realignment of flights for many airlines, including JetBlue. The realignment was also supposed to meet the increasing demand for leisure travel. The addition of the two Florida flights and the cessation of the flights to Kennedy Airport are part of that realignment.

"Florida has been a strong market for all the airports and all of the airlines out of the Northeast," Davis said. "People are still pent up from the days of COVID and they still want to travel."

The airport has also made changes, in part to accommodate the increase in passengers.

The security checkpoint expanded from one lane to two ahead of the start of the Fort Myers flight, which Davis said has improved efficiency at the checkpoint.

In May, the airport will begin a project to move the checkpoint to a vacant area that will be larger and more spacious. The checkpoint move would also free up space for more seats at the airport's departure lounge, which can get busy whenever the Florida departures come in.

Other infrastructure projects are in the works.

The airport will replace its engineered material arresting system at the east end of its runway as the current system is at the end of its designed life.

An EMAS is a bed of pulverized concrete built at the end of a runway to reduce the potential severity of a plane running out of runway space while trying to depart or arrive.

The EMAS at the west end of the runway is scheduled to be replaced next year.

Worcester's airport, which is built at the top of a hill, does not have a field to run off from and the Federal Aviation Administration requires airports without a field to have an EMAS in place.

The airport has received federal grant funding for the replacement.

The airport will also resurface the three lanes in front of its building, upgrade lights at the front of the airport and repave the curbs. The asphalt on the roadways has aged, Davis said.

"We're kind of at an extreme when it comes to winter weather, being 1,000 feet above sea level," Davis said. "It takes a toll on the asphalt."

Davis said the front roadwork is being assessed now and should kick off at the beginning of 2025. He said the work will be done in a phased manner so only one lane will be resurfaced at a time.

The strong passenger numbers and infrastructure improvements help when the airport goes to airlines to ask for more flights or even to welcome new airlines to Worcester, Davis said.

"If the region supports the air service and fills the airplanes up, that's just going to turn more and more heads," Davis said.

In addition to load factor, airlines value the prices they can get for their tickets. Davis said airlines would like to see that passengers are willing to pay a comparable amount to other airports to fly out of Worcester, which may be more convenient for passengers looking to avoid long drives or shuffling through a large airport like Boston Logan International Airport.

To help airports and passengers, Davis said the airport tries to keep operating costs and parking prices low.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Passenger numbers soar at Worcester Regional Airport after record year