WEST LEBANON — Commercial travel at Lebanon Municipal Airport is on an upswing in 2023, with ridership on flights to Boston and New York on pace to surpass pre-pandemic levels.

Cape Air, a Massachusetts-based airline that provides daily round trips between Lebanon and Boston Logan and White Plains, N.Y., announced record ridership at Lebanon Municipal Airport in the first three months this year.

In a Tuesday news release, Cape Air announced a total ridership of 4,617 passengers between January and March, which exceeded the airline’s previous best first quarter, 4,285 riders in 2012, by 8%.

For municipal airport officials, the numbers are an encouraging indicator that commercial travel in the Upper Valley has rebounded from the upheaval of the novel coronavirus.

Cape Air ridership in Lebanon grew slightly in 2019, and that trend continued in the first quarter of 2020 before COVID upended the travel industry, according to Carl Gross, the airport’s manager. After March 2020, passengers boarding Cape Air flights in Lebanon plummeted, from more than 10,000 passengers in 2019 to 2,660 total in 2020, a nearly 75% reduction.

During 2021, there was uncertainty if and when air travel would recover, Gross said, particularly in whether videoconferencing would result in less flying for in-person business meetings even after the pandemic ended.

While leisure travel bookings returned to their pre-pandemic numbers by April 2022, airline industry officials do not expect business travel to fully recover until the end of this year, according to the Centre for Aviation, a global market research organization.

“Nationwide, there’s still been a bit of hesitation on the business travel side, but that’s going away,” Gross said.

Gross said the Upper Valley has “a significant number” of residents whose employers are based in New York City or Boston and who have used Cape Air to travel between work and home. Upper Valley companies are also booking flights to conduct business.

“Now that we have learned to work with COVID (protocols), we’ve seen a return of the business travelers,” Gross said.

The full return of Dartmouth College students to the campus has also helped flight travel rebound at Lebanon airport, according to Gross, who said that “quite a number of students” to and from the Upper Valley are using Cape Air.

Commercial flights in Lebanon began recovering last year, Gross said. Ridership in the first quarter of 2022 was “just shy” of the tally in 2019’s first quarter by about 300 passengers.

Cape Air, which has served as Lebanon’s carrier since 2009, renewed its contract with the city last year.

The airline runs six flights per day to and from Lebanon Airport, including four routes to and from Boston and two routes to and from White Plains, N.Y. In White Plains, passengers are provided ground transportation to Penn Station in Manhattan. Flights from Lebanon to Boston take just under an hour and range in price from $69 to $108. Trips from Lebanon to Penn Station, including ground transportation, take just under three hours and range in price between $95 to $135.

Since 2010, Cape Air’s ridership has regularly served more than 10,000 passengers per year at Lebanon, with the exception of 2020.

That 10,000 annual enplanement benchmark allows Lebanon airport to qualify for at least $1 million per year in funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airport Improvement program, which helps the airport fund projects related to airport safety, security and capacity.

Last year the airport used $1.5 million in Airport Improvement Funds to replace exterior glass with insulated panes, replace carpets and upgrade the airport’s interior lighting.

This year, the airport plans to rearrange the layout of its passenger waiting area, which combined with new security screening equipment being installed in May, is expected to facilitate the Transportation Security Administration screening process and improve passenger flow.

“This is a great win for the many people in our Upper Valley community who use this airport, both for business and leisure purposes,” Gross said.

Patrick Adrian may be reached at padrian@vnews.com or at 603-727-3216.

CORRECTION: Cape Air is headquartered in Massachusetts. A previous version of this story included an incorrect home state for the airline. 

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