International presence growing at BWI

The number of international flights out of BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport is taking off.

Since 2010, international traffic at the north Anne Arundel County airport has increased 122 percent, from 524,618 passengers to 1.1 million in 2017.

That number should continue to rise in 2018 as several airlines have recently begun new international service or are going to in the months ahead.

For example:

Spirit Airlines started service from BWI to Cancun in November. The airline will add service to Montego Bay, Jamaica March 22.

Air Canada will begin service from BWI to Montreal May 17; Montreal is a new destination for the airport.

Iceland Air announced in January it would return to BWI after an absence of about 10 years, starting service to Reykjavik, Iceland May 28.

WOW Air will expand its service to Iceland with two flights per day during the peak summer period.

Also, tour operator Vacation Express is adding international service to Cozumel this summer. That’s another new destination for the airport and flights will operate June through August.

Airport CEO Ricky Smith said officials at BWI track a variety of data on the preferred destination for travelers who live in the region. For example, data might indicate lots of people from the Maryland suburbs are driving to Philadelphia to travel internationally because of the flights offered there.

That might prompt BWI officials to consider a partnership with an airline to offer that same destination out of BWI, Smith said, thereby increasing passenger traffic.

BWI enjoyed its third straight year of record traffic in 2017, with more than 26 million passengers going through the airport.

“We’ve always been an international airport, just not one of the largest international airports,” Smith said. “But we’re driven by what customers want. We have a lot of information on where our customers want to fly to. We’re really responding to the demands of our customers.”

Many airlines, especially low-cost, no-frills outfits like Southwest Airlines, are eager to join forces with BWI because the overhead charges the airport passes on to airlines is lower there ($9.51 per passenger in 2016) than at the other airports in the region. Reagan National Airport’s CPE (cost per enplanement) was $13.44 in 2016, while Dulles’ was $21.00.

“The cost of operating here … is much lower than the same cost you find at Dulles or D.C.,” Smith said.

In recent years, much of BWI’s increase in international traffic has been driven by Southwest. About 70 percent of all flights taking off from BWI each day belong to Southwest.

Southwest’s first-ever scheduled international flights – to Aruba and two destinations in Jamaica – originated at BWI in July of 2014. Now, Southwest flies to a half-dozen international destinations in the Caribbean and Mexico.

Southwest became the nation’s largest carrier in 2003 and spent the new few years filling out its network to the top 50 air markets in the contiguous United States, according to Brad Hawkins, a Southwest spokesman. Southwest’s acquisition of AirTran in 2011 also pushed Southwest toward greater involvement in the international market.

“As a consequence of (the) acquisition of AirTran … we were able to get a sense of not only how to operate international service, but of its promise in the commercial landscape,” Hawkins said.

If Southwest were to expand its international offerings to, say, Europe and/or Canada, then BWI’s international menu would likely increase as well.

“Southwest is our primary carrier,” Smith said. “They’re a major part of our long-term international plan. When Southwest decides to engage in international travel, they’ve made it clear that BWI will be a major part of that.”

To help their airline partners move their planes through faster, and in anticipation of more growth in international traffic at BWI, officials at the airport recently completed one expansion and are in the middle of another.

A $125 million project was completed last fall that connected two concourses and added a new security checkpoint and two new gates for international carriers.

The current project will add another six gates, plus additional restrooms and baggage areas. That upgrade is expected to be complete in the fall, Smith said.