Airport Experience® News - Post-Conference Issue 2026

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR

into the community to talk about how air service is developed. It’s not just based on what the airport wants, it is truly driven by the communities – where people are flying every day and where they really want to go. I want to focus on building our air service while also building our sense of place? Right now, we have about seven generations of passengers coming through the airport, so innovation and creativity has been another one of my focus areas. We have to think about what the experience looks like for the multiple passengers that we’re having, not just today, but for the future as well. I’m also focused on selling the airport as a gateway. [We contribute] $11.3 billion in economic impact just from the airport itself, and [support] about 170,000 jobs. How do we take the value of the airport and use that as a tool in the conversation around tourism, around bringing in new industries, around making sure that opportunity is happening within the Baltimore area?

We have to be self-sustaining, so revenue generation is very important. Right now, because of everything that’s happening, the passenger numbers are down and that impacts revenue. Parking is down, that impacts revenue. So how can we find new revenue streams and even potentially new types of financial structures? WARD: You mentioned a downturn and passenger traffic. What did you experience in 2025 and what are you expecting in 2026? GRIFFIN: Our passenger traffic was down in 2025 – we finished with 25.2 million passengers, down about 6% from the year before. The biggest impact has been from [changes with] Spirit Airlines . Spirit was our second-largest carrier behind Southwest Airlines, and they experienced a financial downturn and filed for bankruptcy twice. They started taking aircraft out of service. That had a major impact. The other piece was the federal shutdown. During that shutdown period, we had a lot of flights that were canceled. Also, a lot of the federal

Above: BWI experienced a passenger traffic downturn last year, due in part of unpredictability from Spirit Airlines, the airport’s second largest carrier, the 2025 federal government shutdown and the massive number of job eliminations within the federal government.

jobs have been lost in the region. Once you start cutting individuals, they don’t have discretionary income so it’s quite impactful. This year, we are starting to see [passenger numbers] creep just a little bit and flights are being added. Southwest continues to add flights. They’ve made some business decisions that may help as well. WARD: Turning to capital development, I know BWI recently completed the AB Connector and baggage handling upgrade. Did that add capacity? GRIFFIN: The five gates [involved] were Southwest gates that had been there, and this really was a revamp of that area. It did provide additional capacity for baggage, but

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AX NEWS APRIL/MAY 2026