Despite COVID-19, Some U.S. Bizav Destinations Show Growth

An OK August—its 3,063 departures marked an improvement of 8.9% on 2019—helped Love Field to a total of 12,991 bizav departures during the COVID-affected half-year, itself 27.7% down on 2019. Among the other positives in this difficult summer: TAC Air’s redevelopment of the Braniff Center—transforming the vacant property into a retail, hangar and FBO space—was named Airport/Transit Project of the Year by ENR Texas & Louisiana. It opened in February and counts Flexjet among its occupants.

At first, the figures look good. Some 14,403 business aircraft flights departed Teterboro Airport in the COVID-affected half-year of March-August. But the New Jersey airfield is atop a different chart, too, with the highest-year-on-year decline in traffic among the 10 airports in this gallery, down 63.7% from 2019. That, however, is better than earlier in the pandemic when traffic plunged 97%.

President Donald Trump’s local airport when in Florida—in 2015, he took legal action to try to reroute a flight path away from his Mar-a-Lago resort—has seen its numbers dip by 17.4%, with total departures through the March-August period of 12,231. Gulfstream and Jet Aviation opened a joint service center in late August. The airport generated some positive media coverage during the pandemic after two animal-welfare charities arranged charter flights to bring hundreds of dogs and cats to Florida from overcrowded shelters in Costa Rica, where they were at risk of being euthanized.

Another airport that saw a modest improvement in August was Centennial. The Colorado airfield’s 2,747 departures represented a 2.7% increase on August 2019 figures. For the six-month period, Centennial’s 11,454 bizav departures represented a 22.7% decline. According to the latest update of the economic impact assessment published by Colorado’s Aeronautics Division, the airport contributes $2.1 billion per year to the state’s economy. This almost doubled its estimated contribution as stated in the previous edition of the report, released in 2013. The airport is home to electric-aircraft company Bye Aerospace.

The pandemic hit Van Nuys Airport right in the middle of an extensive program to rehabilitate two taxiways. The $29.7 million, 14-month Taxiway B project at the California airport was completed at the beginning of March. Work on Taxiway A, scheduled for completion by the beginning of July 2021 at a cost of $35.4 million, was beginning almost immediately thereafter. Resultant runway closures and temporary shortening will have contributed to the 32.9% decline in year-on-year departures to 10,638 for the six-month period, but the majority of that was due to COVID-19.

COVID-19 played a part in the decision Scottsdale Airport took to limit the hours when Customs facilities are available between July 1 and Sept. 30, but the main driver was a revision of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection billing protocols. From July 1, CBP began charging on a full-cost recovery basis, which increased expenses for the Arizona airport. For three months, CBP service was available only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday-Monday to help the airport and users find ways of offsetting the higher charges. Any effect this had on traffic appears limited: The airport was one of the best performers in the Top 10, its 9,284 departures representing a 10.9% decrease from March-August 2019, while the 1,547 departures in August were 22.9% higher than the previous year.

Westchester County Airport attracted media attention at the end of April when it became the first in the U.S. to close due to the pandemic. However, the decision reflected pragmatism rather than panic: by closing for a week, the White Plains, N.Y., airport was able to condense what otherwise would have been a four-month program of nighttime work to repave the runway into a month. The airport saw 9,936 bizav departures during the six months, down 47.6% from March-August 2019.

There were bright spots amid an otherwise depressed picture at Houston’s business-aviation airfield. With 8,826 departures, Hobby (KHOU) recorded a 41% year-on-year decrease, but the pill was sweetened in May when Skytraxx named it the third-best regional North American airport. The following month, Galaxy opened an FBO on the site—the sixth such facility at Hobby. The FBO takes up half of the first floor of a new two-story, 23,000-ft.² building, which is also home to aircraft management and charter company Wing Aviation. The facility is augmented by two 38,000-ft.² hangars.

Georgia has been hit hard by COVID-19. As of Sept. 14, the state was nearing 300,000 cases and had suffered 6,353 deaths. The state’s governor, Brian Kemp, has used Dekalb-Peachtree Airport as the launchpad for several tours designed to encourage social distancing, the wearing of masks and increased hand-washing as means to combat the virus. He held a news conference at the airport Sept. 4 before taking his message to the cities of Valdosta, Savannah and Augusta. The airport’s bizav departure numbers were down 36.1% for the March-August period, at 8,558.

An unusually public row has broken out between John Wayne Airport and JSX, a Part 135 operator that flies Embraer regional jets on a “hop-on” model out of FBOs at the facility. On Sept. 11, JSX CEO Alex Wilcox emailed customers and launched a social-media campaign asking them to urge the Orange County Board of Supervisors to retain the airline at the airport. JSX is facing new leases in January that could prevent FBOs subleasing their facilities to airlines. JSX says its value to customers includes a 20-min. check-in and the enhanced distancing in the COVID era that cannot be guaranteed for travelers using the airport’s main commercial terminal. The airport’s business-aircraft departures for March-August were down 31.8%, at 8,492.