IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Things are definitely looking up at Ontario International Airport.
Passenger traffic in May was nearly 80 percent of where it was before COVID-19 hit in the spring of 2020, according to data released Wednesday by the Ontario International Airport Authority.
Nearly 367,000 passengers passed through the airport during the fifth month of this year, 77.2 percent of Ontario International’s passenger count in May 2019.
Compared with May 2020, passenger traffic was up 422 percent.
The authority, which oversees daily operations at the airport, has said it expects a passenger count of 1.4 million passengers from the beginning of Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, the peak summer travel months. If that prediction holds, Ontario International will have hit 88 percent of the passenger count it recorded in the summer of 2019.
“We continue to be enthusiastic about the pace of recovery at Ontario International and we are equally optimistic about volumes over the summer as air travelers rediscover the many advantages of arriving and departing our airport.” said Mark Thorpe, the authority’s chief executive officer, in the statement.”
Airfreight shipments declined 20 percent in May, to 65,000 tons, year-over-year. However, freight handling was up 18 percent in the first five months of this year compared with the same period in 2019, according to the authority.
