SAN JOSE — San Jose International Airport has just achieved a long-absent milestone for passenger activity in a sign that the Silicon Valley aviation hub’s rebound from its coronavirus-induced ailments has strengthened.
The South Bay air travel complex has achieved a benchmark that had eluded the airport since the coronavirus outbreak three years ago caused passenger activity to nosedive by massive amounts.
Here’s the milestone: San Jose International Airport has averaged at least one million passengers a month over the most recent one-year period, this news organization’s analysis of the airport’s latest statistics shows.
During the 12 months that ended in April, San Jose Airport handled about 12.04 million passengers, which works out to a shade more than 1 million passengers a month.
The passenger total for the most recent one-year period was 6.3% higher than the 11.33 million passengers the airport accommodated during the calendar year of 2022, the analysis of the San Jose airport statistics shows.
In April, slightly fewer than 1.02 million passengers transited through San Jose International, airport officials reported.
The monthly total for April was 5.5% higher than the amount for March when San Jose Airport handled about 964,900 passengers.
April’s passenger total also was 4.6% higher than the activity accommodated at the airport during the same month in 2022, the new report released by San Jose Airport shows.
The last time San Jose Airport handled at least 1 million passengers during a single month was in November 2022. Still, the airport topped the million-passenger mark during eight of the most recent 12 months.
Despite the upswing in passenger activity at the airport, the South Bay aviation hub remains well below its pre-coronavirus levels.
In 2019, the last full year before state and local government agencies mandated wide-ranging business shutdowns to combat the spread of the coronavirus, San Jose Airport accommodated an all-time record high of 15.65 million passengers.
The South Bay air travel facility handled an average of 1.3 million passengers a month in 2019.
Even with the sturdy improvement, San Jose’s passenger totals for the most recent one-year period ending in April were stuck at an altitude that was 23.1% below the record-high level achieved in 2019.
San Jose isn’t alone among Bay Area airports in experiencing a current passenger shortfall compared to pre-COVID trends.
Oakland and San Francisco airports, in their most recent reports, disclosed they were far below the coronavirus totals that those airports set, respectively, in 2019.
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