SWFIA not too hectic on busy travel day

Many who arrived as recommended several hours before their flights were scheduled to take off found themselves being checked in much faster than they expected. Barbara Yeomans was among them, waiting for some time for her scheduled JetBlue flight to New York after quickly being checked in.

"I travel quite a bit," she said. "Airports are usually busy right now. But I walked right up to the (ticket) counter, so that was a surprise. I expected to have a line."

Jose Suarez said he was confident that this airport would be a lot less hectic and congested than Miami International, and he was not disappointed.

He said he drove his wife and children from their home in Weston in Broward County on the east coast of Florida to take off from SWFIA. He said another big incentive to make the two-hour drive was that the JetBlue fare from Fort Myers to New York is $100 cheaper per ticket than the one leaving Fort Lauderdale.

He said he saved $500 on his tickets for his family as a result.

"We thought it was going to be easier (taking off from SWFIA) than Miami. Obviously, it was. But this has been even easier than we expected. It is easier than ever. I'm going to do it again," he said.

Airport Marketing Director Susan Sanders said SWFIA definitely has gotten over the lull in business that occurred after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

She said passenger traffic was up 15 percent this September compared with last year, and up 8.6 more than September 2000, which was a record month for the airport passenger traffic at that point.

"That was the highest September the airport ever had (for passenger traffic). We are now basically above 2000 levels now," she said. "We're right now breaking 20-year records again, consecutively. Before Sept. 11, we had had 18 consecutive months of record-breaking traffic. We're now at 11 months of record-breaking traffic. I would say we are expecting a record-breaking Thanksgiving with more passengers than we've ever had."

One reason is more air service. Several new airlines have begun service at SWFIA this year, including Delta's Song and USA 3000. Sanders said some of the airlines have added larger aircraft to handle increased demand, and some have added more flights to their schedules.

"There are more seats in the market, but they tend to be occupied very quickly," she said.

Increasing numbers of passengers have created challenges. She said airport officials are having to deal with the challenge of record-breaking numbers of passengers but fewer screeners because of budget cuts at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). "We've been setting 20-year (passenger) records every month. We are up above the pre-9-11 numbers," Sanders said. "That, combined with the fact that we do have all these new security procedures and there has been staff cuts with the TSA due to budget problems, I think we're all a little concerned about the movement of traffic through this terminal during the Thanksgiving holiday."

Sanders said a new terminal scheduled to open in the beginning of 2005 should be a great help at handling the ever-increasing passenger load.

"Sometime in the beginning of 2005 there will be a brand new terminal that will be able to accommodate all this traffic," she said. "So, unlike other airports where this is just something they are going to have to continue to deal with, at least we have a light at the end of our tunnel."

Sanders said the airport has a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season, particularly the fact that weather was excellent in Fort Myers and throughout most of the country. So there were not many delays up North that could have a chain-reaction effect that would delay passengers from taking off.

Whatever the reasons, passengers said the congestion and wait at the airport was much less than they had anticipated. Kris Cella and her daughter, scheduled to fly on Spirit to Detroit to visit Cella's grandmother, arrived two hours early.

And they had a lot of time to kill waiting for the flight after a swift check-in. "This is going a lot more smoothly than I thought it would. This is great," she said.

Naples resident Bob Begg and his wife were waiting for their daughter to arrive on a flight from New York on JetBlue. He said getting into the airport was easier than a few years ago after the terrorist attacks.

"Thank God they stopped searching the trunks of cars. Right after 9-11, every car coming in was searched. They would search the whole car before you could park it."

Joan Hart of Cape Coral was waiting to catch a flight to Washington, D.C. She said checking in and taking off from SWFIA is much less stressful than dealing with the Dulles airport. "I commute between here and Washington every month. So I'm in and out of airports all the time. It's very easy to get through security," at SWFIA she said.

Douglas Perkins, the federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration, said, because of budget constraints, there has been a 25 percent reduction in luggage screeners at the airport.

"The good news is the screeners last year were all brand new at it. Although I think they were efficient, they weren't as fast as they can be with a little experience or practice. (The reduction in staff) really hasn't been that big of an impact on us so far."

Perkins said the fewer screeners are having to deal with more sensitive metal detectors. He said new walk-through metal detectors recently have been installed, and the alarms go off more often.

To keep traffic moving, he said, a new "second pass" system was adopted this year in which people can go back through the metal detector a second time if the detector alarm goes off the first time.

He said, in the past, if a person walked through the detector and the alarm rang, a screener took them aside and used a wand to scan their bodies, which was a time-consuming process.

"The screener (under the new policy) will give the passenger a chance to go through and take something else out of their pocket, to take their cell phone out, or take off their belt and shoes," he said. "This (second pass system) is a little less intrusive, and we're doing it to improve customer service."

Perkins said passengers can help the flow of people going through the scanners by taking off their shoes ahead of time to be scanned, and putting their metal items in their carry-on bags.

Perkins said that even though the American Automobile Association bills the day before Thanksgiving as the busiest travel day of the year for Americans, that is not the case with the airport in Fort Myers. In fact, he said, Tuesday likely will turn out to be busier than Wednesday.

"Fort Myers, Florida, is a different market than a lot of markets out there. Every airplane is full coming in here, jam-packed," he said. "Going out they are not quite as full."

Perkins said airport traffic should be much heavier this weekend, particularly on Sunday, when people are leaving or coming back from the long holiday weekend.

"We're prepared for the passenger load we have today. The real busy time is going to be Saturday and Sunday and Monday."

The airport took several steps to try and move passengers through the airport more efficiently. Short-term parking for one hour is free. This was done so fewer drivers who are picking up passengers would park in front of the curb at the terminal, which could back up traffic.

The airport also had expanded curbside check-in.

"We'd like to encourage curbside check-in as much as possible," Perkins said. "Curbside screens bags a little quicker."