The day before Thanksgiving was a milestone for officials at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall, the region’s busiest airport, with more than 31,000 passengers departing. It was the most in a day since the start of the pandemic — a sign of the airport’s resilience, said BWI executive director Ricky Smith.
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The airport is expecting similar crowds as travel ramps up for the holidays. In a conversation with The Washington Post, Smith discussed how BWI is weathering the pandemic and what travelers can expect on their next trip to the airport. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: How are things at BWI? We’re still in the pandemic, but how has the recovery been?
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A: We have a lot of reasons to be happy about how things are going here at BWI Marshall. Our recovery has been very strong. We can’t compete with some of those airports in strong leisure markets like Florida and Texas and other parts of the country, like Denver — where people go for tourist reasons — but if you compare us to other airports in the Northeast, we’re doing extremely well and we’re certainly doing much better than other airports in the Washington capital region. We think we’re getting a lot of that demand because people feel comfortable flying out of this airport.
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Q: Can you talk about how the BWI experience has changed during the pandemic?
A: We’ve always been an airport that focused on the cleanliness of the facility, certainly around our high-population areas such as restrooms, security checkpoints, food courts and places like that. We’ve had to focus on intensifying cleaning and engaging in aggressive sanitation efforts. Just disinfecting the airport during the day and during downtime in the evenings requires enormous time and resources. We’re still under a mandate to have passengers wear and employees wear masks or face coverings. So we’ve had to do a lot of communications to get that word out so people will understand that they’re coming into an environment that might be different than the last time they flew.
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Q: Where are you in terms of your recovery? Do you know when you might get back to 2019 levels?
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A: We’re between 20 to 25 percent down compared to this time in 2019. When we were at the height of the pandemic, we were forecasting that we wouldn’t see passengers begin to return to 2019 levels until sometime late 2023 or early 2024. Well, we are way ahead of that forecast. There were periods during this year where we saw passenger levels higher than 2019, which is amazing.
Q: Do you think maybe 2022 could be the year you fully recover?
A: I try not to pretend that I have a crystal ball. I would say because, you know, we thought we were smart a year ago when we were forecasting 2023, 2024. I would say that if traffic trends continue — and there are a lot of variables out there — if traffic levels continue, that I think we can begin to see on a more consistent basis pre-pandemic levels next year.
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Q: When did things start to turn around?
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A: In the summer and spring holidays we began to see traffic return. Each holiday represented a new milestone for us. I want to emphasize the fact that, you know, the real recovery has been around leisure travel. We saw an incremental increase in our traffic recovery throughout the year. We’re expecting to see a significant increase in travel during the holidays, as well.
Q: How much of your traffic is leisure versus business?
A: It’s about 60 percent leisure, 40 percent business, under normal conditions.
Q: As you mentioned, the holidays are coming up. It’s been a while since some people may have traveled, so this may be their first time. What should people expect?
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A: If they have the time they may want to come a little earlier than two hours because you will have people traveling that haven’t traveled in a while, and that only adds to some inefficiencies.
With lower fares and more amenities, BWI lures D.C. region’s travelers
There will be communications in the terminal — advice around social distancing, around mask-wearing. There is a mask requirement throughout the terminal, except when you’re sitting in the food court eating, but even then we expect you to wear your mask as much as possible. And certainly when you get onto the aircraft, you have to wear your mask. I think you’re going to find passengers perhaps a little more sensitive than normal around people being in their space.
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Parking can be an issue because our parking facility began to fill up pretty quickly. And so that’s part of the reason you should arrive as early as possible just to make sure that you are able to make adjustments.
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Q: The Board of Public Works recently approved a contract to improve restrooms at the airport. People might giggle about that, but can you tell us what projects like this mean for the customer experience?
A: We’re human beings, and we have a need for restrooms. Passengers often give us feedback on the cleanliness of the restroom or how long they had to wait to use the restroom, and so being customer-focused, we’re investing in improving our restrooms to better serve our passengers. This project is a multi-phased project that’s going to increase the size of the restrooms. There’s a federal requirement that we have nursing stations in the airport, so we’re building that feature into our new restrooms.
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Q: When was the last time those restrooms had a makeover?
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A: It depends. We have done some improvement to restrooms as part of different projects at the airport. We have a set of restrooms, for example, that were newly renovated five or six years ago. But we have many restrooms that haven’t been touched in 20 years. The airport has grown a lot over 20 years, so can you imagine a restroom that was designed to accommodate passenger traffic 20 years ago? It certainly cannot meet the same demand, and so we’ve got to expand.
Q: I understand that BWI now has a new urgent-care clinic on-site?
A: Yes. FirstCall Medical Center is in the terminal on the public side so anybody can have access to it. It provides all of the services that you would get at many urgent care centers: emergency care, travel vaccines and so forth. Before this service was opened, a passenger who had to get a covid test, for example, would be sent off-airport trying to find a clinic. We now have that service at the airport for both our passengers and our airport employees. We are one of maybe three airports in the country to have this center, and it’s already outgrown its space.
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Q: Can you talk about some of the projects happening at BWI, including the expanded Concourse A that opened in May and the Concourse A and B connector project?
A: The Concourse A Project is a very symbolic project for us because it signals the resiliency that we’ve tried to demonstrate during this pandemic. This project actually started in 2019 before the pandemic kicked in, so it was very challenging for us to continue. We’re glad we stuck with it. It’s a very well-designed, bright and colorful facility with larger [gate areas], and it certainly meets the need for Southwest Airlines as we go forward. It included five additional gates.
The Concourse A and B project also will introduce more concession space, a new connector between concourses A and B. [It includes] larger [gate areas] to accommodate the larger aircraft that Southwest Airlines is [operating]. This will be the largest capital improvement project in the history of the airport. So we expect groundbreaking sometime late this year or early next year. It also will include a new baggage handling system that will improve the efficiency of bags going outbound to aircraft that will allow them to depart in a more timely fashion. And it allows TSA to screen the bags more efficiently. It also improves inbound baggage so more customers will have a more predictable and reliable experience with their bags when they return.
Q: Where is BWI financially?
A: Well, 2020 was scary, but we did recover very well during this pandemic. We are in a good place. We will be launching the Concourse A and B project, the Southwest Airlines maintenance facility project, for example. So we’re in a good place right now.