After taking a big nosedive in 2020, the number of passengers flying out of Buffalo Niagara International Airport is finally soaring higher than the totals from before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The airport has seen a gradual yearly return to normal passenger traffic recorded going through TSA checkpoints, according to airport data. Last year, there was sustained outperformance of 2019 traffic over some time periods, but the annual passenger total was still below the 2019 mark, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
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A Southwest flight takes off from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. The airline has added more flights from the airport to three popular destinations.
This year, barring anything unforeseen, it is on pace to finally outperform 2019’s year-end totals, said Pascal Cohen, airport senior marketing manager.
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Passenger traffic at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport has been up over 2019's figures for a number of stretches through the first half of 2024. Courtesy of Pascal Cohen.
The major driver of the increased traffic this year has been carriers boosting the number of seats departing from Buffalo, particularly American Airlines, JetBlue and Southwest Airlines, Cohen said.
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Southwest, which posted the biggest seat gains by a big margin, added more than 121,000 seats from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024, a 17.4% increase from the seats added during the same period the year prior, according to airport data.
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Its service to Las Vegas was made daily again in September, Cohen said, bringing the largest seat gains alongside service to Orlando and Denver. American and JetBlue added more than 96,000 and nearly 52,000 seats, respectively.
After the pandemic, Southwest aimed to grow its network not by expanding into new markets, but by adding depth and breadth to the markets it already serves, said Chris Perry, a spokesperson for the airline. The three destinations from Buffalo that saw the largest seat gains – Las Vegas, Orlando and Denver – are all in the company’s 10 largest markets by daily operations.
Perry added that the company’s network planners continually evaluate routes for new opportunities. Cohen said the company’s service to Phoenix from Buffalo will soon be returning to daily service, as well, again bringing more potential seat gains.
“This trend of Southwest increasing significantly here is continuing, so that’s why I’m saying that we fully expect – in spite of the runway construction that we’re having for the summer, which will affect some of the longer-haul flights – there is no doubt in my mind that we will be surpassing 2019 numbers by at least 5-10%,” Cohen said.
Nationally, air passenger totals recovered to beat the 2019 figures last year, after a sustained increase since 2020, according to the BTS. More than 1.053 billion people flew from the U.S., up just barely from over 1.052 billion in 2019.
Cohen said the process of boosting service since the pandemic’s heights has been like digging out of a hole for the aviation industry.
“This really shows,” he said, “we’ve really come back fully from Covid-19.”
Justin O'Connor can be reached at 716-849-3407 or [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @_justinoconnor.