John Wayne Airport Passenger Traffic Plunges 97% in April
Just how empty was John Wayne Airport in April?
Really, really empty.
Airport officials on Tuesday reported just 25,313 passengers passed through SNA gates as the coronavirus lockdown brought air travel to a near halt. In April 2019, the airport reported 899,186 passengers. The loss represented a 97.2% change in traveler traffic, something not seen since the days after the Sept. 11 attacks on the East Coast.
The April decreases were widespread for all airport operations:
Commercial aircraft operations were down 78.4%
Commuter aircraft operations dove 71.2%.
Total aircraft operations decreased 51.4% with 13,085 take-offs and landings compared with 26,922 in April 2019.
General aviation activity decreased 40%.
The top three airlines based on passenger count were Southwest Airlines (9,884), American Airlines (6,880) and Delta Air Lines (2,473).
As the COVID-19 lockdown took effect in mid-March, JWA reported 337,981 passengers for the month, a decrease of 63.4% when compared to the 923,403 passengers that passed through the airport in March 2019.
There was relatively good travel news over the Memorial Day holiday as U.S. air travel returned to levels not seen since March.
More than 318,000 people passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints on Thursday followed by 348,673 on Friday, topping 300,000 for the first time since March 23, according to figures from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
More than 8,500 flights took off on Thursday and on Friday, the most of any single day since April 13, as airlines added service, according to data from FlightAware.
The volumes are still a fraction of prior-year levels. The number of people who passed through airport security checkpoints on Friday represented just 12% of passenger volumes on the Friday before Memorial Day last year.
Bloomberg and staff writer Erika I. Ritchie contributed to this report.
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