Despite the addition of a new airline last year, the Lincoln Airport posted its worst passenger numbers in more than two decades.

Slightly fewer than 380,000 people flew into and out of Lincoln in 2006, a 6 percent decline from 2005 and the lowest number of passengers since 1985, according to airport records.

By contrast, Omaha’s Eppley Airfield set another record in 2006, with more than 4.2 million passengers.

Since the Lincoln Airport set its record of more than 550,000 passengers in 1999, numbers have dropped every year but one.

Adventure Travel owner Bill Bennett said locals have gotten used to going to Omaha for better fares.

People who call his office almost always list Omaha as their departure city, he said.

Executive Travel owner Steve Glenn, a former Airport Authority board member, agreed.

He compared trying to keep Lincolnites from flying out of Omaha to “trying to stop an avalanche.”

But Glenn said he doesn’t think airport officials are too worried because they make most of their money from the airport’s industrial park.

“They make their living regardless if there are 300,000 people or 500,000 people flying out of here,” he said.

Lincoln Airport Director John Wood has acknowledged the airport struggles to compete with Eppley, but said reduced capacity was a big factors in last year’s decline.

Planes leaving Lincoln are just as full as they’ve always been, Wood said, but they are smaller and there are fewer of them.

Case in point: Northwest Airlines, which has been operating under bankruptcy protection, cut service from Lincoln to Memphis at the beginning of last year and reduced the number of local flights to Detroit from three to one.

That led to a 20 percent decline in passengers for Northwest, which more than offset the gain the airport got from adding Allegiant Air.

Allegiant started twice-weekly service to Las Vegas in February 2006, and carried more than 20,000 passengers in 11 months.

United Airlines, Lincoln’s biggest carrier, saw a 5 percent decline. Half of that came in December, when two major snowstorms hit Denver and cancelled thousands of flights, including several in Lincoln.

Despite the airport’s poor showing in 2006, Wood said things could rebound this year.

Northwest is slated to come out of bankruptcy in a month, and Wood said he’s hoping it returns one of the two lost Detroit flights.

Though that’s not a certainty, it’s looking more possible now that Northwest and Pinnacle, a regional carrier that operates the airline’s Lincoln flights, have reached an agreement to add 17 50-seat jets to Pinnacle’s fleet.

Martin Lewandowski, Pinnacle’s local station manager in Lincoln, said all Northwest flights out of Lincoln will now be on 50-seat jets or larger. In the past, some of the flights were on jets with 44 seats.

Wood’s other hope for expanded service this year is Allegiant. The airline has been rapidly adding flights in cities all over the country.

Wood hopes Allegiant will either increase the number of flights from Lincoln to Las Vegas or add flights to Orlando.

Allegiant last month said it had no plans to “change anything we are currently doing” in Lincoln.

Bennett said more flights, more destinations and competitive prices are needed.

Glenn agreed Lincoln needs to get more competitive, but also said the airport needs to think outside the box to attract fliers.

One idea? Subsidize commuter flights to Kansas City to allow people to tap into the vast array of flight choices out of the airport there.

“It’s a tough deal, I’m not saying it’s easy,” Glenn said. “But I’d like to see them try some unconventional ideas.”

Reach Matt Olberding at 473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com.