IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Passenger traffic at Ontario International Airport fell 70 percent in June, a staggering year-over-year decline that was still an improvement compared with the previous two months.
The airport’s passenger count last month was 142,029, down from 477,861 in May, according to the Ontario International Airport Authority.
But those numbers, a clear sign of how severely COVID-19 has hurt airline travel, were better than May and April when passenger traffic at Ontario International fell 85 percent and 93 percent.
More than 140,300 passengers traveled on domestic flights in June, while the remaining 1,700 were international travelers. During the previous two months, Ontario International had no international passengers.
Passenger traffic fell to 1.3 million during the first six months of this year, a 48 percent decline compared with 2020.
Airfreight shipments increased by nearly 30 percent in June and 20 percent in the first half of the year, the result of more e-commerce.
Freight shipments totaled more than 79,000 tons last month, the fourth straight month that Ontario International recorded freight tonnage gains of 22 percent or more. From January through June, the airport processed 422,000 tons of freight, slightly more than than one year earlier, the authority reported.
