Editorial: MacArthur Airport's bumpy flight
A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 jet about to take off at MacArthur Airport. (March 29, 2012) Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Declining passenger use of Long Island MacArthur Airport is worrisome. But the airport is too important a regional asset for the Town of Islip to allow worry to morph into moping. The town has no realistic option other than to keep plugging away, fighting national trends, to do whatever it can to attract more passengers.
A Newsday study shows that 2011 was the fourth consecutive down year in the number of arriving and departing passengers. It was 2.4 million in 2007, but slid to 1.6 million in 2011.
The sluggish economy, strategic decisions and mergers of airlines, the powerful competitive presence of Kennedy, LaGuardia and even Newark, the shortage of direct flights from Islip and the price differential between MacArthur and the big three, all play a role in that decline. Those macro factors are tough to overcome, but there are still things the town can do.
Unfortunately, the terminal for the airport's main carrier, Southwest Airlines, is on the wrong side of the airport from the Long Island Rail Road's Ronkonkoma station. Any future airport terminal should adjoin the station. But for now, new Islip Supervisor Tom Croci is correct to pursue funding for some type of people-mover system to provide a more convenient train-plane link. Convenience, after all, is the airport's chief selling point.
As he seeks that, Croci needs to keep working with the Town of Brookhaven to create a real downtown at the Ronkonkoma station. If they can make the Ronkonkoma Hub flourish, its success is very likely to create more demand at the airport.
The airport could also use lengthening of a runway, so that it has two 7,000-foot runways. That's not to attract bigger planes, but to provide a safety margin.
These are not new ideas. Nor is the wooing of new carriers. Airport commissioner Teresa Rizzuto and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have done a lot of that. So far, it hasn't worked out. But Schumer is to be commended for continuing to make this airport a top priority.
Rizzuto has kept the airport functioning, despite dipping revenues. Now Croci has embraced the responsibility for making it grow. He'll have to push relentlessly to get more travelers from Suffolk and eastern Nassau to choose this convenient airport over its bigger neighbors. That will take time -- and patience.
