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135,100. That is a dang good number. Why? That's how many passengers came and went through CAK this May.We trounced our 2006 record by nearly 10,000!

Now, I don't want to spend too much time bragging because the credit for our growth goes to our customers and to our airline partners.

A number of our customers are experiencing CAK for the first-time. We love to hear from them because many times they have discarded their regular travel habits to either save a little money or to see what CAK is all about. Often, they have to drive a little farther too. So we really appreciate their extra effort. Many times, our first-timers will post a comment to our FB wall sharing their airport experience. We learn a lot from them about how to tweak our offerings to make CAK even more relaxing.

Of course we can't break records without additional capacity; airline seats and destinations. Building capacity though takes strong market fundamentals and a can-do attitude. The Northeast Ohio economy, particularly the southern flank is experiencing a slow and steady recovery from the economic meltdown that was 2009. We see that load factors and revenue are inching up and that seems to have inspired some confidence with airline route planners.

Here is a quick look at new CAK-pacity:

                                                                 # Weekly Flights '09#        Weekly Flights '10

AirTran Airways       New York LaGuardia          14                                         21

AirTran Airways       Orlando                                7                                        11

SkyWest/ AirTran    Milwaukee                             0                                        13

US Airways              Charlotte                             28                                        35

Frontier Airlines      Denver                                14                                        14 (A320)

Delta                       Detroit                                 21                                        28

 

A lot of these extra flights are seasonal; here only during the peak summer travel season but that's okay. We want our airlines to make adjustments based on demand and profitability.

So, in closing, I have to say thanks to our exceptional airline partners for having faith in our market and for bringin' on the extra CAK-pacity. We rocked May but all the credit goes to our customers and airline partners. Thank you, thank you, thank you.