GREENVILLE, Wis. (WFRV) – It is a quiet week, the calm before the storm, for northeast Wisconsin airports, as the NFL Draft is set to bring tens of thousands of travelers through their terminals.
“It’s going to be twice as busy as we normally see on a regular day,” airport director Marty Piette at the Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport said. “This week will be the busiest week that we’ve seen in at least 20 years. We’re planning for 20,000 passengers over the course of that week. On a busy week, we would normally see about 10,000.”
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Overall demand at the airport has declined over the past couple of decades since the early 2000s, according to Piette. Next week, the airport will return to its bustling heyday.
But in Greenville at the Appleton International Airport, numbers will certainly increase, but may not be record-breaking.
“It will be one of the busier weeks of the year, while we see a lot of traffic during spring break, around the holidays, this might top what we see during those very peak weeks,” airport director Abe Weber said.
There will be an increase in passengers the week of the draft, and up to 27,000 could pour through the terminal across the five busiest days, Wednesday through Sunday.
“We’re expecting about 40,000 passengers to come through the building the week of the NFL Draft,” Weber said. “It’s about 15-20 percent greater capacity than we see during a normal week, so it is a little uptick for us and we’re excited about that.”
There are 20 different locations the draft goers will arrive to the Fox Valley from, and all the logistics have taken more than a year to plan.
“We’ve been planning for this for over a year, so from all of our vendors inside the terminal to outside the terminal, we’ve been making sure we can accommodate the additional traffic with additional staff and new policies and procedures that are put in place,” Weber said.
Appleton International Airport is also wrapping up a new concourse project just in time for the draft, allowing more passengers to pass through its doors.
“We’re going to be bringing three additional gates online through our new concourse project for the NFL Draft,” Weber said. “That’ll provide ample capacity for the additional flights and frequencies that we’ll see.”
According to Weber, one of the most significant causes of delays is people not having the proper information at the ready when they get to the airport, and passengers should have the correct app for their respective airline downloaded and ready to go ahead of time.
“We always like to tell people to get mobile and ready, make sure that they are checked into their flight,” he said. “That they’ve got their app downloaded for the airline, and if there’s any flight disruption, they can get notified first from the airline.”
Airport officials are advising passengers to get to the airport even earlier than usual, a minimum of 90 minutes before their flight, advises Piette.
“Arrive at least an hour and a half ahead of your flight, which is probably a little bit longer than we’d normally recommend,” he said. “TSA wait lines will be a little bit longer during peak periods.”
Flights are filling up quickly, and fliers might have difficulty obtaining tickets.
“If anybody’s out there that hasn’t booked yet, do it soon,” Piette said. “Because these flights have been selling out pretty quickly in the last week or two.”
Steady demand has caused flights across the country to be added by airlines in the last couple of months, according to Piette.
“We’ve seen a number of additions through our legacy carriers, United, American, and Delta have all added frequency through their existing hubs,” he said. “We’ve also seen American add New York City flights, Delta’s added New City, Los Angeles, and Orlando.”
The last couple of weeks has seen demand skyrocket as more people make the late decision to attend the draft, which is a free event that only requires registration on the One Pass App.
“We saw the flights added a few months ago, they’ve been selling out really well over the last couple of weeks,” Piette said. “So that was a direct result of the demand of people wanting to come to Green Bay to watch the draft.”
Piette says airport staff have been working around the clock to make sure that all aspects of the facility are prepared to take on the load of passengers.
“We work with all of our tenant restaurants, gift shops, rental cars, making sure they have enough inventory staff on hand,” he said. “Airlines are bringing in extra people as well to make sure there’s enough people to work the flights.”
Regular meetings have ensured that partners are effectively planning for the tens of thousands of travelers expected.
“We hold weekly stakeholder meetings to make sure that we know what everybody is doing and anywhere we can help out,” Piette said. “For our staff, it’s all hands on deck, everybody’s done a great job getting the terminal building ready and the grounds outside as well.”
Piette says the commercial aviation traffic may be an even easier logistical task than the one private flights will bring.
“The most challenging part for the extra traffic isn’t so much the commercial traffic on the airlines, we have plenty of space inside the terminal building,” Piette said. “We’re watching the general aviation side, the private aircraft, and how many people will be coming in and needing to park those aircraft, fueling services.”
Just like commercial tickets, general aviation bookings have spiked in the last couple of weeks.
“We’re really starting to see that ramp up within the last two weeks or so,” Piette said. “Both Jet Air and AvFlight have about 30 reservations for space at their hangars; those numbers will certainly increase.”
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Even with the continued expectation that bookings will increase, Piette does not foresee having to turn away flights, as other airports have discussed having to receive overfill as far south as Sheboygan.
“Our intention is that anything that wants to land here can land here,” Piette said. “We’re fortunate with the two long runways, we have plenty of parking space. So our plan is we’ll accommodate everybody.”
