As Wilmington International Airport continues to work on infrastructure upgrades and route improvements, officials were buoyed by a recent passenger survey that gave the airport high marks.

In the customer satisfaction survey, completed by the Jackson Group, ILM received high scores overall, airport director Jon Rosborough said.

The company used information from telephone and in-person surveys to compile data. Travelers reported that they like the ease of parking, ease of getting through security, cleanliness, friendliness of staff and shorter lines than those in other airports.

With about 800,000 passengers going through ILM each year, meeting everyone’s needs involves a delicate balance, officials said.

While passenger traffic declined 5 percent over 2013, the numbers are down only 1 percent compared to 2012. And the number of inbound passengers to ILM is greater than outbound.

It’s not easily explainable, said ILM director of operations Gary Broughton, but possibly some passengers stay into the next month or two, skewing the in and out ratio for a given month.

Rosborough said airport officials are constantly focused on customer satisfaction. The customer base is about 70 percent business and 30 percent leisure travel. 

“What the customer wants is frequency, nonstop flights, good airfares and jets,” Rosborough said.

And travelers need to be globally connected, he said. ILM offers connections to hubs so travelers can get to Charlotte or New York to catch a flight out of the country. 

Airport upkeep is also on the top of the list. A $4.5 million project to resurface runways and another $1 million project to clear trees for extended runway approach were completed recently. Runways are resurfaced every 20 years, Broughton said. 

ILM’s $7.4 million budget comes, not from taxes, but from sources such parking revenue, which funds 42 percent of the budget. The Federal Aviation Administration and the
state have also contributed capital, Rosborough said.

Airlines have their own agenda, with keeping the bottom line in the black requiring a capacity discipline model. Out of the nine major airlines remaining, there are only four large ones: American Airlines – which merged with U.S. Airways – Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, Rosborough noted.

Two of those serve ILM.

When Broughton and Rosborough meet with airlines to pitch bringing additional service to ILM, they have to bring the data. If ILM has only 100 passengers going to a hub, for example, one of the favored large planes could take all the passengers at one time, eliminating scheduling flexibility. Southwest would need at least eight flights a day on large aircraft out of ILM to make it a feasible market, Broughton said. 

Making the case to add flights to ILM also means making the case to remove flights from another market, airport officials said. Airlines are utilizing larger aircraft and refurbishing the ones they have, but not increasing the size of the fleet. There was a 14.2 percent decline in the number of aircraft in use between 2008 and 2013, Rosborough said.

As for airfares, Broughton shares a cautionary note.

“We have to tread lightly about asking for lower fares,” he said.

If airlines can fill the plane to 88 percent capacity at a certain fare without losing customers to another airline, they will hold. At some point, lower fares cut too deep, and the airline pulls out of ILM altogether, officials warned.