Airport Experience® News -Customer Service Issue 2026

high school during the city’s Electric Daisy Carnival and live country music during the National Finals Rodeo. In addition, LAS hosts community engagement events, the most recent of which was the Paper Plane Palooza, which brought airport partners and children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada together for a paper airplane competition. Each child who participated received a suitcase filled with donated school supplies and other goodies, and Frontier Airlines donated two roundtrip tickets to the overall distance winner. ONT hosts annual events on its campus like 5K at the Runway, Multi-Chamber Mixer and the State of the Airport gala, and the community engagement department also plans regular “passenger pop-ups” to surprise travelers with activities and treats. This year these pop-ups occurred every month to celebrate the airport’s “Decade of Local Control” campaign. The community engagement team also appears at events throughout the city and surrounding area. “This year the team popped up at events like Ontario’s Concerts in the Park, Taste of Brea, West Covina Business Expo and more

to surprise community members with food, fun games, and educational information about ONT and the Decade of Local Control celebration,” King says. Additionally, ONT – through its advertising and partnerships department – hosts a quarterly Authors at ONT book signing event with local authors. ONT’s customer experience department, meanwhile, hosts monthly “surprise and delight” activations at the airport. “These unexpected moments of fun and connection may be tied to national observances, holidays, and local or cultural celebrations, but sometimes we do them just because,” says Tiffany Yonta, director of customer experience. “The goal is simply to give our customers and employees an experience they weren’t expecting to have at an airport.” Yonta adds that these events earn “consistently positive” reactions. “We receive a lot of immediate verbal feedback from travelers, and one of our favorite reactions is some version of ‘I’ve never seen anything like this at an airport before!’,” she says. “Those comments are especially meaningful because that’s exactly what

Top, Above: Harry Reid International Airport recently hosted student DJs from a local high school during the city’s Electric Daisy Carnival. In another activation, the “Paper Plane Palooza” brought airport partners and children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada together for a paper airplane competition.

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AX NEWS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2026