This season: Airport sees in the end of spring break

CEDAR RAPIDS — Spring break may be officially coming to end today, as many Eastern Iowans return from trips south and out west. But planning for spring break began weeks ago for The Eastern Iowa Airport.

'Spring break can sometimes be spread over three weeks,' Airport Director Marty Lenss said. 'This year has been a bit unusual in that spring break is condensed to one week.

'We have contingency plans, primarily in the area of parking. If our parking lot fills up and we have overflow parking, we know how we will implement that in terms of who does what and when.

'Our parking lot vendor, Republic Parking, is watching inventories go up and we can start to predict when we're going to fill up based on past experience.'

Lenss said employees of the airport, rental car companies, other vendors and the Transportation Security Administration are the first to be displaced when additional parking spaces are needed.

'It's easier to move them, so they are part of the advance planning conversation,' Lenss said. 'We are very close to capacity. We have come within 200 spaces, which sounds like a lot until you consider that a single Allegiant Air flight can have 150 passengers.'

With spring break traffic in mind, Lenss said contractors handling a $48 million passenger terminal remodeling project worked to minimize any travel disruption.

'Thankfully we were able to get both baggage (conveyor) belts open before spring break,' he said.

'This may be the only trip that many of these spring break travelers will take this year,' said Pam Hinman, airport director of marketing. 'We get phone calls from people who haven't flown in 15 years. We talk them through the rules to help make their trip easier.'

Now as spring break comes to an end, Hinman is working on preparations ahead of two athletic events in the Corridor next month that are expected to increase passenger traffic.

The National Collegiate Roller Hockey Championship games will be held April 6 through April 10 at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena. The sport has more than 175 teams and 2,000 players nationwide.

At the other end of the Corridor, the USA Wrestling Olympic Trials will be held April 9 and 10 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City. The winners will go on to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Hinman said a key part of planning for spring break travel involved talking with the airline station managers in advance. The same will hold true for these events.

'We knew that Friday and Saturday of last week they were all going to be at 94 percent to 95 percent load factor (aircraft seating capacity),' Hinman said.

Lenss said the Cedar Rapids CVB and the Iowa City/Coralville Area CVB typically provide details on how many people are expected to attend each event, when they will arrive and leave, and how any ground transportation needs will be handled.

'It's also helpful to know where they will be coming from,' Lenss said. 'We share that information with the airline station managers, but also the planning and scheduling groups for the airlines. Sometimes we will see an uptick in passenger volumes and the airlines will be able to shift capacity by using a larger aircraft or increasing the frequency of flights.

'That's why United Airlines added a nonstop flight from Cedar Rapids to Los Angeles specifically for this year's Rose Bowl,' Lenss said.