NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — With stops along the way, a person can fly from Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport to London for $502 round-trip.
On Continental Airlines, it’s $598 to Bejing, $743 to Paris, $769 to Rome, $1,007 to Hong Kong and $1,050 to Cairo for those who’ve decided the annual jaunt to Branson just won’t suffice this year.
But for the nearly 4,000 Marshallese people who live in Springdale and want to return to their homeland, traveling across the globe is way more expensive than flying to those other international destinations.
Continental Airlines wanted $2,016 last week for a round trip from XNA to the capital city of Majuro in the Marshall Islands, departing in late March.
That’s a bargain compared to what The Guru’s plane-obsessed co-worker Rich Polikoff noticed in late January. He saw round trips near $3,500.
“A lot of people can’t afford it,” said Carmen Chong Gum, a Springdale resident who works as consul general for the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
“If you are lucky, you have relatives who work at the airlines, and they can get buddy passes. Or, they have to wait until income tax season so they have money to buy tickets.
“We do complain, to each other. It’s like wow. It’s too expensive.”
Still, people do go. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics provided information to The Guru showing an estimated 200 people traveled from XNA to Majuro in the 18-month period that ended Sept. 30.
Even at the high prices, flights to the Marshall Islands sell, said Frances Mayo, owner of Around the World Travel in Springdale.
The agency sells eight to 10 flights to the Marshall Islands a month. The fare is $1,300 to $3,000, she said.
And let the record show that it’s one long trip. Departing XNA at 6:15 a.m. on a Sunday with an overnight layover in Honolulu, the passenger (victim?) doesn’t arrive in the Marshall Islands until Tuesday morning.
FREE WI-FI AT XNA
Free Wi-Fi service provided by Complete Computer Solutions became available Feb. 11 throughout the Alice L. Walton Terminal at XNA. The airport is paying $1,000 a month for the service, airport Director Kelly Johnson said.
Free wireless Internet service is something airport visitors want, evidenced by a massive increase in the number of users at Boston Logan International Airport. The airport reported that users logged on to the free Wi-Fi 1.4 million times last year, up from 350,000 times in 2009, according to the Massachusetts Port Authority website.
Fort Smith Regional Airport and Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field, have free Wi-Fi, too. Neither airport could provide statistics about how many people log on.
It’ll be interesting to see if XNA has exceptionally high Wi-Fi usage comparative to its size. The Guru’s bet is that it will because business travelers with all their laptops and gadgets will appreciate being able to tap into a good thing.
Robert J. Smith’s column about people on the move in Northwest Arkansas appears each Monday. He can be reached at [email protected].
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/21/2011