SAN JOSE — San Jose International Airport soared to strong gains in passenger flight activity during January — but the aviation hub’s longer-term trends are stuck well below the peaks prior to the coronavirus outbreak.
An estimated 866,267 air passengers traveled through San Jose airport during January, which was a big jump of 55.3% over the 557,678 passengers that the airport handled in January 2022, new statistics posted by the airport show.
Over the most recent 12-month period that ended in January 2023, San Jose airport handled 11.64 million passengers.
That represented an increase of 51.1% when compared with the 7.71 million passengers who transited through San Jose International Airport during the 12-month period that ended in January 2022.
Yet while the current trends are encouraging, San Jose airport’s activity is cruising well below the lofty altitudes to which the aviation hub had soared prior to the coronavirus outbreak.
In 2019, San Jose airport handled an all-time record of 15.65 million passengers.
This means that San Jose’s passenger activity during the most recent 12-month period that ended in January of this year was 25.6% below the numbers for all of 2019, which was the final year before the coronavirus-linked business shutdowns began in March 2020.
San Jose airport is no anomaly. The other two big Bay Area airports have struggled to climb back to their pre-COVID heights.
Both Oakland International Airport and San Francisco International Airport remain a big distance away from where they were prior to the coronavirus outbreak.
Oakland airport’s most recent 12-month total of 11.37 million passengers was 15% below the East Bay air travel hub’s 2019 total of 13.38 million passengers.
San Francisco airport’s total for all of 2022 of 42.28 million passengers was 26.4% below that aviation center’s total of 57.49 million passengers during 2019.
San Jose airport recently was bolstered by an announcement from Spirit Airlines that the low-cost carrier had decided to initiate its first-ever flights out of the South Bay.
Spirit Airlines will begin flights every day of the week starting in June that will connect San Jose with Dallas, San Diego and Las Vegas, the company said.
“This is a really significant milestone on our road to recovery,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in an interview with this news organization at the time of the February Spirit Airlines announcement. “It demonstrates that we are bouncing back. People are traveling again. Aviation is showing a resurgence.”
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