When Tennessee history professor Rebecca Conrad made plans recently to tour the Civil War battlefields of Maryland, she told her travel agent that she wanted to avoid the hassles and crowds of the airports around Washington.
The quiet airfield, an hour north of Rockville, has yet to register as a viable alternative -- even among travelers who have searched for a way to skirt the lines and heavy traffic at Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International airports.
But with plans to expand the runway and open the door to regional jet service that could get someone from Hagerstown to Paris with one stopover, airport directors in Hagerstown believe that's about to change.
"Right now, we're the best kept secret in Maryland aviation," said manager Carolyn Motz. "But once our expansion is completed, this little airport is going to be the logical place to come."
For several years, regional airports have increasingly drawn traffic from the nation's overtaxed, big-city hubs. When Boston's Logan Airport topped 27 million passengers a few years ago, Massachusetts transportation officials scrambled to promote smaller airports in Manchester, N.H., and Providence, R.I., to handle the spillover. In Los Angeles, the role of release valve fell first to nearby Burbank and more recently to Ontario.
"In Maryland, none of our regional airports are as viable as Hagerstown to play that role," said Bruce Mundie, who heads the office of regional aviation in the Maryland Aviation Administration. "It's only a matter of time before someone goes, 'Hmmm, rather than fight the traffic, I should look north.' "
Less than an hour north of the Montgomery-Frederick County border, near fields of sorghum and rows of corrugated-metal service hangers, is a passenger terminal as silent as a library. About 25,000 passengers passed through the terminal last year.
Between commuter flights to Pittsburgh and Baltimore, the loading area is locked shut. National Guard soldiers carrying M-16 rifles pause among the passengers to watch "The Price Is Right."
Rental car agents wait for the next planeload to arrive, hoping there will be passengers on board because some flights still arrive empty. Gate agents double as travel consultants, dispensing tickets and advice to travelers , such as Bob and Carolyn Parker, who stopped by the U.S. Airways counter recently to plan a trip to see their grandchildren in San Jose.
The Parkers had discovered that they could fly out from Hagerstown, 15 minutes from their home, compared with an hour-and-a-half drive to BWI. "It saves us a lot of hassle," Bob Parker said. "It's easy to get here, you can park for free and there are never any lines. How can you beat that?"
Mundie said he believes convenience is just a factor that will soon transform Hagerstown's terminal.
Growth at BWI can continue for only so long before travelers start craving an alternative, Mundie said. Passenger loads at the Maryland hub have doubled in a decade, and more than 20 million people now file through the airport's gates each year. And the delays have been exacerbated by security measures adopted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"But the thing that really is more interesting is the way demographics may wind up sending passengers in Hagerstown's direction," Mundie said.
Washington sprawl has produced rapid growth along the Interstate 270 corridor, with Frederick County seeing a larger rate of population gain this year than during any year of the 1990s, according to the Maryland Department of Planning. That, airport officials say, means an expanding market.
To accommodate more passengers, airport officials in Hagerstown plan to lengthen the 5,461-foot runway to 7,000 feet, part of a $60 million expansion that will include improvements to the terminal. Motz said the longer runway will allow regional jets to serve the airport. In theory, providing access to regional jets would generate interest among airlines, which have yet to seize on Hagerstown as an important destination.
Larger airlines, looking for ways to compete with nimble carriers such as Southwest Airlines and AirTran, will try to capitalize on their ability to reach smaller airports with regional jets that can funnel travelers to nearby hubs, airport officials said.
"The future of aviation in this country rests with the regional jet and the smaller regional airports," said Alfred Testa, who oversaw the expansion of the Manchester, N.H., Airport in the 1990s and now runs the airport in Harrisburg, Pa. "As the hubs get bigger and bigger, they are choking themselves to death."
