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Wichita Airport Sets Passenger Record In 2017

Nadya Faulx
/
KMUW/File photo

Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport set a passenger traffic record last year, with a total of 1,620,240 passengers arriving at or departing from the airport.

That’s up about 1 percent from last year, and tops the previous record set in 2008.

“So, we’ve taken about 9 years, or 8 years to get there," City Council member James Clendenin said at a news briefing Thursday.

Eisenhower has 29 percent fewer flights than it did in 2008, and 15 percent fewer seats. Four of the airlines that operated nine years ago don’t exist anymore: AirTran, Continental, Northwest and US Airways.

The city says Alaska Airlines’ new nonstop service to Seattle is mainly responsible for the record year. Delta and American also saw increases in the number of passengers.

Allegiant and United reported decreases, and Southwest Airlines’ traffic was similar to 2016.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.