Texas Drillers Boost Traffic at Harrisburg's Airport

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

August 25, 2011 | 2:30 PM

The latest company to benefit from Pennsylvania’s natural gas drilling boom: Harrisburg International Airport. The Central Penn Business Journal reports, “Political lobbying and business connected to gas drilling in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale regions is likely a reason for passenger traffic spikes over the past year between Texas cities and Harrisburg International Airport.”
More on the spike in Lone Star to Keystone State Flights:

The number of passengers arriving from and going to Austin, Dallas and Houston — where major oil and gas companies have headquarters — has jumped considerably compared with traffic between HIA and other popular destinations, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Dallas leads with 37,390 passengers in 12 months ending in March this year, a 60 percent increase over the previous 12 months, according to the statistics. Houston traffic surged 44 percent to 17,240 passengers in the same time period. Austin traffic was up 40 percent to 8,040 passengers.
Forth Worth, Texas — which shares its name with Dallas’ airport — is home to natural gas drilling company Range Resources Corp. Houston is home to engineering, drilling and industrial services company Halliburton, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., as well as the U.S. headquarters of Dutch gas company Shell. Each firm has significant business in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus regions.

Last week, we profiled a Pittston-based company that has doubled its business, due to drilling.