RFD Plans for AirFest at ICAS

Rockford AirFest

RFD is attending the International Council of AirShows (ICAS) from December 4-8 in Las Vegas. This is the conference where much of the airshow business gets done. Every year, after the keynote speaker finishes, the show dates are put up on a big screen. Some shows have an idea that they will have a jet team, and others literally find out for sure at that moment. There are cheers, a couple groans, and a lot of buzz. As soon as that is completed, the entire room, over 750 people, pour into the exhibit hall to start the work of putting together their event. There are vendors, performers, military, media, and a lot of air show professionals. The atmosphere is electric as all of the directors and air show personnel go from booth to booth matching up dates with performers. Each night the deals continue at and around the hotel. What results are a lot of lineups get set for the next year. The result is a lot of work towards entertaining millions of people in families across the country in the year to come.

RFD plans throughout the year for the AirFest. Each year the planning begins shortly after the last plane has taken off from the show. The 40+ staff at RFD, 50+ steering committee members and the 650-700 volunteers work incredibly hard to make the AirFest possible. Each year the show gets bigger and bigger, and despite setbacks of weather and last year’s unfortunate cancellation of the Blue Angels, AirFest continues providing a better quality of life and great entertainment to adults and kids alike in the Midwest. Stay tuned as the announcement for both 2012 and hopefully 2013 is revealed on Monday, December 5, 2012 around 12:30p CST.

Diversions Add Up Part #1

On November 30th RFD staff took part in the Department of Transportation (DOT) / Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aircraft Diversion Forum in Washington DC. This Forum was attended by over 100 industry leaders to address the problem of extended tarmac delays for diverted flights. Airports, Airlines, Air Traffic Control, and Homeland Security personnel were on hand to openly share thoughts and ideas on how to better prepare the National Airspace System for future diversion events.

RFD serves as a primary diversion airport for 31 air carriers that service the region. Our facilities, ranging from our 10,000ft Runway, our Category II/III Instrument Landing System and our fuel and deicing capabilities, not to mention our geographic location in relation to Chicago O'Hare, Midway and Milwaukee, and our International Arrival Gate make us very attractive to the airlines when considering where to divert.

While we welcome diversions, this forum gave us valuable insight and industry connections for future events. We continue to update our aircraft diversion plan and to work with all of our partners to ensure that what we do is safe, and is in the best interest of the airlines and their passengers.

In the coming months you will see more on this topic, both here and in the media. We hope to hear from some of you who have been on a diverted flight to get a better understanding on what passengers need while they are in a diversion situation. As we make updates to our plan we are going to talk about those improvements here on our blog. We also want to make sure that we highlight our partners from local hotels to transportation companies who are there when we need them to take care of our unscheduled visitors.

Throughout this process one thing will remain constant, RFD's commitment to being a world class airport and to provide the safest, most customer friendly airport environment for diverted flights.

October up 26%

A huge thank you to all of you who Flew RFD in October. It's not every day that an airport gets to publish a press release showing 26% growth year over year but that is what we had the pleasure of doing late last week!

We want to thank Allegiant Air for adding additional seats into our Las Vegas market using a Boeing 757 aircraft and for additional flights into Phoenix-Mesa.

For the month of October we had 12,006 passengers use RFD in October. Thats up from 9,564 in October of 2010. Even more impressive was our load factor (how full the planes are) at 92%. These full flights really demonstrate that given product RFD can serve as an air service alternative for the region.


We are also very excited to be bringing on Frontier Airlines to Denver beginning December 15, and adding our Second Apple Vacations destination, Punta Cana, beginning December 26. Both of these destinations will continue to move our passenger numbers upward.


Going forward we continue to focus on finding additional destinations, carriers and frequencies. This is all part of our Strategic Plan, adopted by the board to continue to focus on Passenger Air Service Development.



So, what destinations would you like to see out of RFD?

Juice Up, Takes Off

Working at the airport you learn things about people. Anxiety about security, how much they hate delays, and the nuisance that is keeping all the technology in their life fully powered. For years RFD has had a lot of power outlets in the boarding area. Many people though didn't really recognize they were allowed to use these outlets. Many of us who work here have heard the question "May I use that outlet?" to which we always respond "Yes!"

As part of our effort to improve the passenger experience we recently launched a new campaign called "Juice Up." It's pretty simple, we took all of our outlets in the boarding area (over 100 of them) and put bright neon orange covers on them to make them highly visible! They've been in place for two weeks now and we have had several compliments on the outlets and the fact that its FREE and highly visible! Just what we were going for.

Juice Up is also about our FREE Wi-Fi to go with the power. You can download that new app and top off your battery all right before you step on board the airplane.

We hope you enjoy all the new amenities and make sure before your next flight you Juice Up.

September to Remember

In case you didn't hear we had a phenomenal month of September here at RFD. Passenger traffic was up 40% year over year thanks to Allegiant Air providing service to Clearwater/St.Petersburg throughout the month.

Overall we had 8,629 passengers use the airport in September. Historically Allegiant has reduced the frequencies or seasonally eliminated service to Clearwater during September.

Another exciting area of growth has been our upgrade to the Boeing 757 on our Las Vegas route. This has grown our capacity to Las Vegas from 150 seats per flight to 217 seats per flight.

We were very pleased to keep these flights this September and with a 90% load factor the region did a great job filling the seats! We've now had eight of the past nine months see growth year over year and year-to-date traffic is up over 16%!

Going forward we continue to focus on maximizing our existing destinations and look to engage new destinations. We've heard from many of you over the year and remain focused on delivering the product you're looking for.