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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2020-03-02 Airport Committee Minutes City of Bangor Airport Committee rd City Council Chambers 3 Floor March 2, 2020 Meeting Minutes The following City Councilors attended: Councilors Rick Fournier, Susan Hawes, Sarah Nichols, Angela Okafor, Gretchen Schaefer, Ben Sprague and Laura Supica. Also in attendance were City Manager Cathy Conlow, Airport Director Tony Caruso and Airport Marketing Manager Aimee Thibodeau. Agenda and Discussion: 1. Airport Advertising and Marketing a. Airport Statistics – Dec 2019 & Jan 2020 Airport Director Tony Caruso reported we ended 2019 with another record passenger count month in December and a calendar year total up .6% over 2018. Market mix and load factors continue strong. Our December Operations traffic was down from 2018, although we are currently 4% ahead of FYTD 2019 traffic. Our Fuel Sales are ahead of last year and budget, primarily due to a 23% increase in DOD sales. January passengers up 14% over last year; about 600 passengers less than our 2018 record year. Our market mix is still strong. Load factors were down due to winter cancellations and delays. Our January Operations traffic was up 4% over last year with Fuel Sales up 16% over last year. Fuel Sales are still up 4% for FYTD b. Routes Americas 2020 Tony & Aimee attended Routes America, an opportunity for 1 x 1 meetings with airlines. The conference also provides networking opportunities and discussions with future potential airlines, cargo operators and other industry officials. They met with all our current airlines except Allegiant. Informal discussions with Allegiant confirmed they are happy with the operation here. c. Marketing Update We launched a first-time digital advertising campaign from mid-January to mid-February targeted to local vacation travelers. The campaign cost about $8,000 and ran on Google Ads, Facebook and Pinterest. The campaign generated 1.4 million impressions with 80% of the people being new website visitors. We will run a similar campaign during March/April for the next vacation period. We now have additional website analytics to see which pages visitors are clicking on, how long they stay, etc. Our total February Facebook Page Views were down 57% . This was expected since January numbers were driven up by the US Today contest. User engagement is up over 10% so the people we captured during the US Today contest are staying engaged. Our total Page Likes are up over 8% from 2019. d. USA Today contest An expert panel selected BGR as one of 20 “Best Small Airports”. The contest asked the th public to vote and we ended in 5 place. This is a very impressive showing given the size of some of the Airports with which we were competing. e. Wings-for All event Feb. 1, 2020 – review We had a fantastic turnout for this event. Only three individuals were unable to make it on the plane. All three families appreciated that we held the event and that the participant made it as far as they did. We are in discussion to hold a similar event next year. Meeting Adjourned.