When Steve Smith arrived at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport on Monday for a flight to Myrtle Beach, he became the 3 millionth passenger to leave there on a Spirit Airlines flight.
“I didn’t even look at my ticket,” said Smith, 66, of Saltlick. “Usually, my wife’s the lucky one.”
Moe Haas, airport manager, said employees knew the 3 millionth passenger would be on the Myrtle Beach flight, but there wasn’t an exact seat, so they put all of the seat numbers into a bowl to choose.
Smith’s seat No. 13 was selected from the bowl, and he won two round-trip tickets to anywhere Spirit flies out of the Unity airport.
“It’s good to win stuff,” Smith said. “It was exciting.”
Smith said he is already debating where he wants to go.
Haas said the 3 million mark measures how many people have passed through the airport since Spirit began flights there in 2011.
“It’s a great feat that that many people came through here,” Haas said.
Spirit’s continued service as the airport’s sole commercial carrier could be in jeopardy, as a federal antitrust case started at the end of October.
The court will hear a challenge filed by the U.S. Justice Department, which is suing to block JetBlue’s proposed $3.8 billion purchase of Spirit. The Justice Department claims the takeover would reduce competition and raise air fares by eliminating the nation’s biggest discount airline, according to The Associated Press.
Arnold Palmer now offers direct service through Spirit to Myrtle Beach and Orlando, and it previously offered flights to Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa.
Passenger numbers at the Unity airport are down in the wake of those route cuts. There were 98,868 total inbound and outbound Spirit passengers this year through the end of August, about 55.3% of the 178,664 passengers the airport had seen by the same time last year, according to the airport’s traffic record.
Haas said today’s celebration is an indication that Arnold Palmer is “really passenger-friendly.”
“It just goes to show … our upcoming expansion is well-needed,” Haas said.
Arnold Palmer Regional Airport’s $22 million terminal expansion project, which will add 32,000 square feet, is underway, and Haas said construction on the terminal will begin in the spring or early summer.
A letter from the Transportation Security Administration stating that the existing checkpoints did not meet the recommended design standards and those updates were the impetus for the project.
Overall, the milestone is “really great,” according to Haas.
“It’s a boost to our local economy around here with that many people coming through the airport.”
