Holidays, New Flights Bring More Passengers to Sarasota Bradenton International Airport

Dec. 29—MANATEE — Nationwide, airports have been staying busy during the holidays, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sarasota Bradenton International Airport has been busier than most.

"We had 40 flights today and 40 flights yesterday. That's outbound and inbound," Mark Stuckey, senior vice president and chief operating officer for SRQ, said Monday.

"Yesterday, we had more than 6,000 passengers. Today, we're seeing about 5,000 passengers," Stuckey said.

Through Dec. 27, SRQ recorded traffic that was about 60 percent of what it was a year ago, while nationwide, airports were operating at about 36 percent for the same period, Stuckey said.

Local airline passenger traffic is up because of the holidays, and the introduction of new flights. Three Sundays ago, there were only 30 flights at SRQ.

Sun Country introduced service between SRQ and Minneapolis on Dec. 17, Delta started service to Minneapolis and Detroit on Dec. 18, and JetBlue started service to Newark, N.J., on Dec. 18.

Passenger traffic at SRQ is expected to stay strong through the first week of January, and then get a big bump on Feb. 14 when Southwest Airlines begins service.

"We expect to be back to 2019 levels by March. Southwest will give us a pretty substantial increase with eight daily flights in and out of our airport and three additional flights in March," Stuckey said.

Southwest starts service to Baltimore/Washington, Chicago ( Midway), Houston (Hobby), and Nashville on Feb. 14. On March 13 through April 10, Southwest adds Saturday-only routes through April 10 to Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh.

Prior to the arrival of the pandemic, SRQ was one of the fastest growing airports in the United States.

SRQ has stepped up cleaning and mask requirements to curb the spread of the coronavirus, and introduced kiosks where passengers and airport staff can check their temperatures.

Airlines have also stepped up their virus counter-measures to try to reassure the flying public.

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