Fort Wayne International Airport

FWA: 5 Things We Love About Fort Wayne Int’l Airport

5 Things We Love About Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA)

We’re back with another episode in our “5 Things We Love About…” series highlighting features and amenities at airports about the country and the world.

Today we land at Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA) in Indiana.

1. Free cookies at FWA

Without a doubt, Fort Wayne International Airport has one of the best airport amenities we’ve encountered: free cookies for all arriving passengers.

On our first visit to FWA, a seatmate told us that we’d get a cookie on arrival. We thought they were making a joke. But it turned out they were not kidding at all.

The cookies are baked at Ellison Bakery, just across the street from the airport. And FWA has been handing out these delightful welcome snacks for more than 20 years.

The cookies are clearly a hit: in June 2020 the airport handed out its “3 Millionth Cookie” and debuted a new style of cookie. Now, instead of one cookie, every arriving passenger at Fort Wayne International Airport is welcomed with a package that’s filled with several miniature cookies. The flavors include Birthday Cake and Chocolate Chip and several other varieties are rotated in.

2. Local brands at FWA

FWA puts an emphasis on local brands in the airport. Chapman’s Brewing Company out of Angola, Indiana serves a touch of Northeast Indiana with locally brewed beer on tap. And Conjure Coffee brings a sampling of Fort Wayne’s local coffee scene to FWA.

3. Customer service at FWA

We told you about the cookies that the Hospitality Hosts hand out to passengers at FWA. In any airport, that would check the box for customer service.

But FWA doesn’t stop there. The airport’s Customer Service Agents (CSAs) also provide complimentary curbside luggage service, wheelchair assistance, a parking lot shuttle, and other services.

4. Hospitality PAWS

Hospitality PAWS is FWA’s certified therapy dog program.

All the pups are highly trained and certified through the Alliance of Therapy Dogs and show up with their trainers at select times during the week.

5. More to come at FWA

Project Gateway is FWA’s expansion and improvement project. On the agenda: the Parking Lot Rehabilitation Project, East and West Terminal Apron Improvement Project, and the FWA West Terminal Building Expansion. That last piece will add additional gates, a new Mother’s Room, an upgraded Children’s Play Area, and expanded ticketing area, a modernized exterior façade, and more.   

Did we miss your favorite feature of Fort Wayne International Airport? Let us know in the comments section below. And feel free to nominate the next airport to be featured in the “5 Things We Love About…” series.

Souvenir Sunday: Free Cookies at Fort Wayne Int’l Airport (FWA)

Since 2000, volunteer hosts at Fort Wayne International Airport in Indiana has been welcoming arriving passengers with free individually wrapped cookies.

The cookies are made fresh by the nearby Ellison Bakery. And when the volunteers are off-duty, cookies are still available from a self-serve cookie kiosk at the security exit.

Over the years, FWA Airport has given out a lot of those free cookies.

Millions, in fact.

And on Friday, June 26 the airport had a party for the 3-millionth free cookie.

The guests of honor? An unsuspecting family arriving on a flight from Tampa. In addition to the free milestone cookie, their prizes include a basket of gifts from the airport, a free roundtrip ticket for 2 on Allegiant Air, and lots more cookies from Ellison Bakery. Nice!

Despite a drop in air traffic that is no doubt taking a bite out of its budget, the free cookie program at Fort Wayne International Airport is not crumbling.

In fact, FWA and Ellison Bakery announced that arriving passengers will now get a free package of 7 small assorted cookies instead of just one.

Read more about the welcome cookie program at Fort Wayne International Airport in my story on the Runway Girl Network.

Airport amenity of the week: free cookie kiosk

The first time I flew into Fort Wayne International Airport I thought my fellow passengers were kidding me when they said: “Make sure you get a free cookie when you get off the plane.”

 

But they weren’t joking: as I entered the terminal there was indeed someone standing there greeting everyone getting off the plane and handing out free cookies from a little wicker basket.

Turns out they’ve been doing this for more than 10 years. And, so far, volunteers at the airport have handed out more than a million complimentary, locally-baked cookies.

Those volunteers need some off. So most days there’s been no one on duty handing out cookies after 8:30 pm.

Until now.

Airport officials were getting complaints from cookie-loving passengers who arrived at the airport too late to get a snack. So to make sure no one leaves the airport hungry and disappointed, the airport now has a self-serve cookie kiosk.

Are airports ready for the new 3-hour rule? Are you?

(photo courtesy Daniel Incandela)

My column on USATODAY.com this month, Are airports ready for the 3-hour rule?, takes a look at how airports are gearing up for the April 29th roll-out of the new Department of Transportation (DOT) rule to upgrade protections for airline passengers.

We’ve been hearing a lot from airlines – they’re not happy – but I was curious about what the fall-out might be for airports if (when?) more planes end up turning around and coming back to the terminal and if (when?) more people end up stuck at the airport.

I was imagining I’d hear worry, maybe even hysteria, from airport officials.  That’s not what I got. In fact, the responses I got down the line were more along the lines of “We’re ready. Bring it on.”

You can read the complete column – and the very intriguing comments readers have been posting – on USATODAY.com.  Here’s some of what airport officials told me:

Airports at the ready

Long before the DOT announced enhanced protections for airline passengers, airports were holding meetings to work on creating tool kits and best practices that could be used during excessive flight delays. At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, for example, executive vice president for operations Jim Crites says that in 2007 the airport began purchasing extra equipment to help deplane passengers quickly. DFW also started beefing up communications with airlines, with regional airports that might get diverted flights and with airport concessionaires that might need to stay open later than usual during irregular operations. “The customer expects everyone to be on the same page. So instead of doing business in isolation, you began to see more coordination, more teaming up and partnering across entities.”

It’s the same story at many small and medium-sized airports. “After that incident when people were stuck on a JetBlue plane in New York for nine hours we agreed as a management team that we would not let that happen here,” says Russell Widmar, the aviation director at California’s Fresno Yosemite International Airport, “So we’ve had our own passengers’ bill of rights in place for almost a year and a half now.”

The plan that the team worked out was successfully put to the test in January 2008, when severe weather on the California coast brought 14 diverted planes to Fresno Airport. “It really isn’t any problem dealing with extra flights,” says Widmar, “The only difficulty is that these passengers don’t want to be in Fresno. They want to be San Francisco or wherever they were headed. But if they end up here, no matter when they drop in, we have services available for them. No one needs to be stuck on the airplane.”

Widmar believes that by now pretty much every airport is ready to deal with this type of activity. That includes the many small airports not currently covered by the DOT contingency plan rule, such as Indiana’s Fort Wayne International Airport, which often get diverted flights from Chicago and Detroit. FWA executive director Tory Richardson says “The DOT rule is silent on how the coordination plans are to be handled at small airports, even though there are a few hundred of us. But we will step up … Nobody wants the black eye that happened in Rochester.”

More fun freebies at airports

Free is good. And these days many small and mid-size airports are trying to build loyalty by offering travelers free amenities.

In my At the Airport column this month on USAToday.com, I write (again) about the free cookies they hand out at Indiana’s Fort Wayne International Airport as well as some of the fun freebies offered at other airports.

Florida’s  Jacksonville International Airport distributes free flowers to passengers each year on Valentine’s Day and on Mother’s Day.

The Reno-Tahoe International Airport offers free local phone calls year-round.

In Milwaukee, home of Harley-Davidson Motor Company and the Harley-Davidson Museum, the General Mitchell International Airport offers free parking for any traveler who arrives on a motorcycle.

At Ohio’s Port Columbus International Airport, children are given free crayons and blank post-paid postcards and asked to please mail back a picture from their travels for display in an airport gallery. The airport has also purchased its own popcorn machine and hands out free bags of popcorn during quarterly customer appreciation days. “It’s a great way for us to say thanks,” says CMH communications manager Angie Tabor, “Plus, who doesn’t love the smell of popcorn?”

And in Wisconsin, the Outagamie County Regional Airport gives out free toothbrushes.

Airport marketing manager Kim Sippola says: “We noticed that many business travelers would get off the plane, go into the bathroom, and search through their bags for a toothbrush because they were going right from the airport to a meeting. So we thought we’d reduce some stress for our customers by providing them with toothbrushes.”

The airport partnered with a local dentist and now stocks post-security bathrooms with travel-sized oral hygiene kits that contain mouthwash, dental floss and a toothbrush with a single-serving of toothpaste.

Have you found a great airport freebie? Please let us know so we can tell other travelers about it.