Phoenix Sky Harbor saw a pre-pandemic level of passengers and had its busiest month ever
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport broke its all-time monthly passenger record in March – signaling a major comeback for the commercial aviation and tourism industries following the slowdown caused by Covid-19 pandemic, according to the most recent report from the Phoenix Aviation Department.
A total of 4,615,127 passengers flew into or out of the region’s primary airport during March, which was an 8.2% increase from the same month a year ago and a 2% increase from the 4.5 million passengers the airport saw in March 2019, the previous monthly record.
Historically, March has always been the busiest month of the year at Sky Harbor, and it is the month with the most visitors to the Valley. Between Major League Baseball’s Cactus League spring training, a major NASCAR race and the pleasant weather, there are plenty of reasons bringing travelers to the Phoenix area in March.
The passenger record happened even though Sky Harbor had 206 fewer flights landing on its runways than in 2019. A total of 17,216 flights landed at Sky Harbor in March 2023.
While the airport as a whole saw more people in March 2023 than in March 2019, its two largest airlines have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. American Airlines Inc. (Nasdaq: AAL) recorded 1.8 million passengers at Sky Harbor in March, while four years ago it had just under 2 million monthly total passengers. Similarly, the 1.4 million passengers that flew Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) to and from Sky Harbor in March were down 3.3% from its total passenger count in March 2019.
Sky Harbor’s growth has come from other airlines making dramatic increases in passenger count and flights to Phoenix. Most notable is Frontier Airlines (Nasdaq: ULCC), which saw its total passenger count in March increase 108% to 235,086 from the same month a year ago and 182% from where it was in March 2019. Frontier is now the fifth largest airline operating at Sky Harbor, behind Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL) and United Airlines Inc. (NYSE: UAL).
Both Delta and United saw their total passenger counts increase from before the pandemic, although United’s passenger count was down 4.9% from March 2022.
There were also four more airlines operating at Sky Harbor in March 2023 than in 2019 — Allegiant Air, Breeze Airways, Denver Air Connection and Lynx Air.
While the airport is operating at a higher level than before the pandemic, business travel is not completely back yet. The U.S. Travel Association estimated that domestic business travel won’t recover to 2019 levels until 2024, and it’s only expected to reach 76% of its 2019 levels in 2023. While the airport does not track the reason for people’s travel, it is assumed that most of the increased traffic is from leisure travelers, meaning there is still room to grow with business travel expected to increase even more next year.