Coming out of 2019, the Columbia Metropolitan Airport had momentum.

The West Columbia facility had just more than 1.3 million passengers that year, said Director of Marketing & Air Service Development Kim Crafton.

Then 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

To put the hit the airport sustained in perspective, Crafton compared October 2019 (which saw the airport service about 111,000 passengers) to October 2020 (about 52,000).

“That was like our ‘golden year,’” she said of 2019. “That was the best year that the airport had seen in 10 years. And so when you say that it was a gut punch in 2020, it really was.”

But the airport is beginning to bounce back, and Crafton said they are hopeful that travel around the holidays can continue that upward trajectory.

This October, the airport serviced about 102,000 passengers. And while November 2020 saw what Crafton called a “drastically low” number with 22,516 enplanements (people getting on a plane at the airport), she estimated that this year’s Thanksgiving weekend alone accounted for roughly 11,700 enplanements.

Columbia Metropolitan is still a small airport facing some tough challenges — competition from larger airports within driving distance chief among them. Crafton reported that the airport loses about 50 percent of passengers that could travel out of Columbia to Charlotte Douglas International Airport. 

The immensely busy airport about an hour and a half to the north was also hit hard by the pandemic, reporting a 46 percent drop to 27.2 million passengers in 2020 from an all-time high of 50.2 million passengers in 2019. That’s a steep decline, but the traffic still allows Charlotte to support direct flights that Columbia doesn’t offer.

Still, Crafton pointed to some positive headway in this regard. The airport added the budget-friendly Silver Airways in December 2020, offering direct flights to Florida destinations Orlando, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. She also pointed out that while American has yet to reinstate its direct flight to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Delta restarted its direct flight to the airport on Nov. 5.

Overall, Crafton said the team at the Columbia airport now feels more confident about getting back to its “golden year” status than it did earlier in the pandemic.

“In mid 2020, late 2020, within the aviation industry, analysts and experts were saying that it might take some airports up to five years to recover and get back to where they were in 2019. So of course we were kind of holding our breath,” she said. “But after 2021, we’re really on track to come back a lot sooner than five years.”

The airport has been actively working to hasten this comeback. 

In August, it opened a drive-thru COVID-19 testing site on its campus, hoping to afford passengers a convenient option to help them feel more safe and confident in their travel.

“Providing this needed resource for travelers, staff and locals is imperative to ensure continued safety and awareness as we as a community work together to combat COVID-19,” Mike Gula, the airport’s executive director, is quoted in a news release announcing the testing site.

The airport has also looked to improve its facilities.

In summer 2020, it installed a new system of lights to help people find open spaces in its parking garage. LED lights above each space turn from green (indicating a space is open) to red (indicating it is not), and panels at the end of each row show the number of open spaces available.

“We have heard repeatedly that has been such an added value for that business traveler,” Crafton said. “That person who is like, ‘I cannot loop through a parking garage forever.’”

She also highlighted two upcoming improvements. 

Construction is currently ongoing to upgrade baggage checking to an inline system, so that instead of what happens now, where you get the tag at one spot and then take your bag to another spot for it to be stowed on the airplane, you only have to go to one place where they check your bag and place it on a conveyor that takes it where it needs to go. 

This will make the process easier for passengers and airlines and also declutter the airport lobby, Crafton said.

Another big change on the horizon is implementing a common use system, whereby kiosks and ticket counters can readily be switched from one airline to another, making it far easier for existing airlines to adjust their offerings and for new ones to be added. 

Crafton didn’t give a firm completion date for either project. 

She explained that these upgrades aren’t just targeted at improving the passenger experience. They also help the airport attract new airlines and routes.

“That will really benefit not only the traveler, but it’ll be just an easier way of working for the airlines,” Crafton said.