JIA is international in name only

Although Jacksonville International Airport (JIA) has international in its title, it does not have any international routes scheduled, nor is it likely to get any in the near future.

Despite the tremendous growth in the number of passengers flying through JIA, and travelers from Daytona Beach, Gainesville, Tallahassee and Brunswick, Ga., driving there to travel, the numbers do not mean that the airport meets the criteria for international flights.

The number of passengers who board planes at JIA jumped dramatically, increasing from 5.5 million people in 2017 to 6.4 million in 2018, a bump of 16.3 percent.

Director of External Affairs Michael Stewart said a typical growth rate of 5-10 percent is healthy, but around a 20 percent increase becomes "unmanageable."

What becomes unmanageable is the infrastructure at the airport cannot currently support the recent jump in growth.

“The bathrooms overflow, there is not enough personnel, the parking becomes crowded and security lines get longer,” he said.

Marketing Program Manager Greg Willis said the passenger growth is linked to the economy. The increase in leisure travel versus and not business travel is due to the addition of ultra-low cost carriers, airlines which offer cheap up-front flights but have a greater number of add-on fees.

Spirit Airlines and Frontier were introduced to JIA during 2018 when the monthly number of passengers was the highest since 1999.

JIA is busy with the addition of the low-cost carriers, construction of six new gates on Concourse B as well as adding a few regional flights.

All the activity doesn't mean JIA is close to landing international routes.

Adding international flights to its itinerary is complicated.

According to Stewart, JIA has no control over choosing or establishing new routes. Airlines pick where they want to fly based on their own expansion interests.

Airlines determine in what city they will create a hub, based on tourism and population data. They'll then add feeder routes to that hub, create their base and use that to grow their business.

“We are trying all the time to expand routes,” said Willis. “We can’t just add routes, it takes years of negotiating to add routes through the airport.”

Delta, a long-established JIA tenant, is also seeing growth.

“Jacksonville is a strong market for us," said Delta's spokewoman Susannah Thurston. "Delta continues to invest in JAX, with summer seats up about 9 percent, driven by more flying to Boston and Detroit and larger aircraft being flown to New York, JFK.

“We don’t speculate on future network or fleet decisions, which we base on a number of factors including customer demand and aircraft availability,” Thurston said.

Dan Landon, a Southwest spokesman, said that while his airline doesn’t offer nonstop international flights from JIA, Southwest offers the ability to travel to international destinations through gateway cities, which can be reached with just one connection.

Both Thurston and Landon said their airlines have no plans to add international flights at JIA. That's because international flights can be reached through one connection from Jacksonville.

While the market for international flights directly through JIA does not exist, passengers want them.

“We get a lot of complaints for not having international flights,” said Stewart.

Stewart said his reply is simple.

“If you and your friends can guarantee, you and 50 friends, will be flying somewhere abroad every week, then we can talk about securing that flight," Stewart said.

“[In] an airport our size, adding routes usually takes a financial commitment from the community to financially guarantee about $5 million, that the airline not the airport was going to see," Stewart said.

The Jacksonville Aviation Authority, JAA, held a contract with Air Canada to add nonstop service to Toronto. The contract lasted only 10 months due to a lack of passengers.

JIA also offered flights to Puerto Rico in 2007, and to islands in the Bahamas, but none gained a permanent route at the airport.

While international flights are hard to get and harder to keep, JIA is looking specifically at direct nonstop flights to the West Coastand California.

Recently via Allegiant, JIA added a route from Jacksonville to Grand Rapids, Mich., that will start later this year.

Fluctuations in total passengers from 1999-2018 at Jacksonville International Airport

YEAR                      Total passengers

2014                       5,230,591

2015                       5,500,682

2016                       5,591,886

2017                       5,563,303

2018                       6,460,253