Southwest Airlines Co. is prevailing in a game of musical chairs at John Wayne Airport.
The Dallas-based airline recently won approval from airport officials to handle 236,000 more travelers at John Wayne, equating to about four new daily flights.
“We see the market as strong,” said Steve Hubbell, properties manager for Southwest in Dallas, who declined to elaborate on the airline’s plans for more flights.
The extra flights broaden Southwest’s foothold as the largest airline at John Wayne.
It’s been a long time coming.
In the 1990s, Southwest had to deal with John Wayne’s noise-abatement takeoff procedures and opposition from rivals to get into the airport. It started operating there in 1994.
Now Southwest is seizing upon the financial woes of other airlines to gain a bigger slice of the market at the airport nestled between Irvine, Santa Ana and Costa Mesa.
The airline now handles about a quarter of daily flights at John Wayne, according to airport spokeswoman Jenny Wedge. Southwest runs 36 of John Wayne’s 140 daily departing flights.
In June, Southwest was given the OK to serve 75,000 more passengers, and then got another 161,000 in October.
The airport allocates space based on seats. Southwest now has about 3.5 million seats for the year, up from 3.1 million last year.
UAL Corp.’s United Airlines also received approval in June for 10,000 additional seats, according to Wedge.
The gains for Southwest and United seem to be coming from AMR Corp.’s American Airlines. American started off this year with 1.9 million seats and then returned 85,000 of them.
United has roughly 1.7 million yearly seats. It and American operate about half the number of flights that Southwest does out of John Wayne.
John Wayne can handle up to 10.3 million passengers annually as part of a pact with nearby residents, cities and the county. The deal limits flights and noise levels.
The airport is on track to handle 9.6 million travelers in 2006, Wedge said.
The awarding of additional seats comes after reviews of those allocated to airlines in March and September.
Airlines are in the process of gathering information they need to submit to John Wayne for proposed seat allocations expected in the spring.
“Southwest is growing and taking advantage of that growth while others are retrenching,” said Hubbell, who chairs John Wayne’s Airline Affairs Committee representing airlines.
The expansion comes as John Wayne is seeing modest declines in passengers this year.
For September, passengers fell 2.2% from a year earlier to 748,989.
For the year through Sept. 30, 1.1% fewer passengers used the airport.
There are various reasons for the decline, which is being seen at other regional airports as well.
Los Angeles International has seen a 2.5% decline in passengers for the year through Aug. 31.
Tighter security measures banning liquids and gels could be part of the slowdown.
The rules, which recently were relaxed a bit by the Transportation Security Administra-tion, were put in place after a plot to disguise explosives as sports drinks was uncovered in London in August.
One travel market tracker said he’s not surprised by the passenger slip vs. last year.
Disneyland’s 50th anniversary marketing push was in full swing a year ago, bringing tourists in droves to Orange County.
Occupancy at local hotels has slipped as well, according to Bruce Baltin, senior vice president of PKF Consulting Corp.
“There was an upturn in mid-2003 and it has been climbing since,” he said. “We’ve almost had the perfect storm of success. And that is subsiding a little bit. We can’t maintain the high levels of occupancy that we had before.”
From May to August, hotel occupancy rates slipped from last year’s peak levels, according to Smith Travel Research in Hendersonville, Tenn.
Hotel occupancy across the county was 78% in August, down from 82% a year earlier, according to Smith Travel.
