DFW Becomes the World’s Busiest Airport During COVID-19 Downturn

June 5, 2020

DFW International Airport was the world’s busiest airport in May, leaping ahead of other major travel hubs that have downsized during the COVID-19 pandemic.

DFW, still running a fraction of the flights it did a few months ago, operated 12,132 flights in May, far ahead of the No. 2 airport, Chicago O’Hare, according to aviation data company OAG. O’Hare, the biggest hub for Chicago-based United Airlines, had 8,596 flights, OAG said.

“Although we have no passenger numbers, I suspect that it was also the busiest from a passenger number given the large differential,” said OAG senior analyst John Grant.

For DFW, it’s been a matter of shrinking less than other airports have. In February, before the COVID-19 pandemic starting hitting the U.S. air industry hard, DFW Airport had about 26,000 landing and departing flights, behind both Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and Chicago O’Hare.

Almost all of DFW’s traffic is thanks to Fort Worth-based American Airlines, which operated 11,109 flights out of DFW in May, said American spokesman Ross Feinstein.

United and Atlanta-based Delta have aggressively cut flight schedules to try to match dismal demand across the country and the world as people avoid flying to stop the spread of the coronavirus. American has cut, too, but in many ways that has only made DFW more crucial.

American and other airlines are running more flights through major hubs, cutting back on point-to-point flying that made sense when there were far more customers.

“There’s one thing which we can say without question is that coming out of this, DFW and Charlotte will remain two of the three biggest hubs on earth,” American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said last week during a call for an investors conference. “Having big hubs is going to be as important as ever, no matter what might happen with demand."

American also announced Thursday that it would ramp up its schedules by 74% for July compared to what it’s flying now after seeing an uptick in passengers during the last few weeks. With that, American will be flying about 55% of the schedule for July that it had planned before the pandemic hit.

DFW has been the world’s third or fourth-largest airport for the last few years, serving more than 75 million passengers, or about 205,000 a day.

But it’s still quiet at the usually bustling airport. Airport director Sean Donohue said that in May, the airport saw about 25,000 passengers a day after seeing only 10,000 a day in April.

Nationwide data from TSA shows that passengers are coming back to airports and getting on planes, although slowly.

Nearly all of the traffic at DFW is coming from domestic traffic. International demand for travel is still down substantially and analysts expect it to rebound much slower than demand for travel within the United States.

DFW has seen some uptick from other airlines. Qatar Airways has announced plans to increase the number of flights it runs in July, while American plans to restart flights to Dublin in July.

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