The Once Iconic Albuquerque Sunport

How will the $100 million terminal upgrades restore passenger traffic to 2007 levels?

albuquerque airport 360x239 Albuquerque Sunport

The Albuquerque International Sunport was one of the economic engines driving the Albuquerque Metro economy. Not anymore. Passenger traffic has been down by twenty percent since 2007, showing the lack of passengers in the terminal and empty shops at the airport.

Companies looking to locate or expand in the Albuquerque market consider the number of direct flights in and out of the airport an essential factor. In an October Bloomberg article dated 10/31/2017, the headline, “Nonstop flights between cities are a more effective way of generating inter-city investment than increased airport capacity.”

Albuquerque passenger count and non-stop west and east coast flights are down. I am attending a memorial service in two weeks in the San Francisco area, and I will have to change planes in either Phoenix or Las Vegas. It is inconvenient and increases the chance of weather delays. Just years ago, I flew direct to Oakland, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle, but no more.

Typical Airport

What are the Mayor and City Council Members doing about this?

A simple walk-through of Albuquerque Airport shows that our Mayor and City Council are focused on yesterday’s solutions to today’s challenges. They are spending ninety million dollars on airport terminal infrastructure comprising architectural, mechanical, and electrical upgrades. At times, construction workers, airport staff, and concession staff outnumbered passengers.

This reminds me of my first summer as a construction laborer; I had completed the tasks assigned to me, then asked the foreman what to do next, and he told me to look busy. The foreman was over his head if he could not even manage a laborer.

The Mayor and City Council have authorized nearly $90,000,000 in construction projects to look busy for the voters.

The trend in the annual passenger traffic at the Albuquerque Sunport is alarming. In 1990-5,000,000, 2000-6,300,000, 2007-6,700,000, 2010-5,800,000, 2019-5,400,000, 2020-1,800,000, 2023-5,400,000 (the Sunport’s website passenger counter is nonsensical). We are just above the annual passenger traffic level of thirty years ago. At this rate, the Mayor and City Council will turn portions of the Sunport into homeless shelters.

What are our options to boost air passenger numbers?

Albuquerque Airport’s landing fees must be competitive with the other regional airports. Communicate to the airlines we want their business to begin with competitive rates and excellent service. We must market our airport as a competitive alternative to Phoenix without being shut down due to dust storms in the spring, high summer heat, or congested air space.

The film industry spent 855.4 million dollars in New Mexico in 2022 and received $110 million in tax incentives. It is time to get this industry out of private aircraft and into commercial aviation. End the practice of New Mexico tax incentives and tax deductions for private aircraft travel. This will get the Hollywood high earners out of it. If Hollywood travels back and forth on commercial airlines, we can help the film industry stop climate change while increasing the air passenger count between Albuquerque and Los Angeles by reimbursement of travel expenses on commercial airlines, instead of allowing their use of private jets for travel.

The Albuquerque Tourism Department should create an advertising campaign to reach out to retired and young professionals who are a direct flight away from Albuquerque. Please encourage them to visit Albuquerque for a long weekend, to get away from their cold and snowy or hot and humid weather, or for a romantic getaway.

The high-tech industry wants us to believe that video conferencing has replaced in-person meetings. However, it isn't easy to collaborate solely by video conferencing. Hit situation comedies were written collaboratively, not with video conferencing. Seinfeld and Thirty Rock would not exist if the writers collaborated via Zoom. Albuquerque is ideally situated to become a center for Airport Venues for Meetings and Events. John F Kennedy Airport and O’Hare International Airport currently provide meeting and event spaces at their airports for out-of-state businesses. Albuquerque is ideally situated for this business opportunity; we are almost equal in distance between Southern and Central California, the Midwest, and Texas. And we do not have the bad weather that Kennedy and O’Hare airports have.

Most airports in the country look the same. You can only tell where you are by looking at the signs on the walls and the mayor's smiling face welcoming passengers to their city. However, a few exceptions exist, such as Bozeman, Denver, Las Vegas, and Portland (they even sold collector pieces of their iconic airport carpet). Albuquerque’s Sunport used to be included in that list. Still, today, it reflects more of Taco Bell / Chipotle Grill's corporate culture than New Mexico’s, which efficiently moves people with minimum interactions with our city’s best resource, our people.

What surprised me most in researching this article? The passenger counter on the City of Albuquerque Sunport’s website inflated the passenger count by one million. We all understand why the Albuquerque crime statistics are unreliable, but the passenger statistics are, too. Clearly, Mark Twain's words are still relevant today.