El Paso Airport Passenger Traffic Dramatically Falls in 2020 Due to COVID-19 Pandemic
El Paso International Airport's passenger traffic declined almost 58% in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, new data show.
The airport saw 1.49 million airline passengers in 2020, just over 2 million fewer passengers than in 2019, when the passenger count was 3.52 million, according to airport data released Friday.
That brought less revenue to the airport, which was able to soften the blow with $18.56 million in federal stimulus money. The airport used most of that money in its 2020 fiscal year, which ended Aug. 31.
The decreased traffic also hurt hotels and other businesses that heavily rely on airline passenger traffic for sales.
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The number of daily airline departures were cut by more than half. In December, the airport had 22 daily departures on five airlines, compared to 54 departures in December 2019. Those numbers do not include two airlines with weekly flights in 2020.
Southwest Airlines continued to dominate the El Paso airline market with 42% of El Paso airport passengers using that airline in December. American Airlines had 32.2% of the El Paso market, United had 14.5% and Delta had 6.2%.
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The airport's airline passenger traffic started strong in January and February, exceeding 2019's numbers. But in March, as COVID-19-related travel restrictions took hold, the numbers began dropping. The worst month was April, when only 24,375 passengers went through the airport.
It wasn't until the summer travel season that passenger traffic began to grow again, but it was still well below 2019 numbers. By December, the traffic grew to 133,235 passengers — still less than half the 322,016 passengers that used the airport in December 2019.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; [email protected]; @vickolenc on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso airport passenger traffic dramatically falls in 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic
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