The four airports serving Los Angeles County reported a dismal first half of the year in passenger counts, with the combined tally dropping more than 3% compared to the first six months of last year.
Los Angeles International and Long Beach airports reported declines during the first six months, while Hollywood Burbank and Ontario International airports eked out slight gains of less than 1%.
The combined cargo tonnage was also down more than 4% at all four airports, with LAX posting the biggest drop of 9% during the first half of the year compared with the same period last year.
These are the topline results from the Business Journal’s monthly survey of passenger and cargo statistics at the four airports, as reported by the governing authorities of each of the airports.
Steeper drop in passengers
On the passenger side, more than 44 million people traveled through the gates at the four airports during the first half of the year, down 3.4% from the same period last year. The drop also exceeded the national average, which showed a 0.5% decline for the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year. As of last week, the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics had not yet released May and June cumulative totals for all of the nation’s commercial airports.
The first half of the year saw several major macroeconomic challenges converge to push down air travel across the country. The chaos surrounding President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs injected uncertainty into the economy, impacting travel decisions. Trump also continued his rhetorical campaign against Canada, prompting many Canadians to pull back on their travel plans to the United States. Southern California has long been one of the biggest tourist destinations for Canadians.
Locally, the Los Angeles region suffered early in the year from the spread of images of January’s wildfires. Some tourists who might have booked spring travel plans to the region may have reconsidered those plans in the wake of the fires.
Long Beach, LAX airports down
The biggest percentage drop in passengers locally was at Long Beach Airport, which reported its tally was down more than 10% for the first six months of this year compared to last year.
The municipal airport is now greatly tied to the fortunes of Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co., which holds close to 90% of all flights at the airport. Southwest’s struggles over the last several months have included shortages of planes and customer dissatisfaction with the new policy of charging for checked baggage.
A spokeswoman for Long Beach Airport added another factor. During much of the first half of last year, the airport reported the highest passenger volumes in its 100-year history.
“While activity is down compared to our record-breaking year in 2024, passenger traffic for the first half of 2025 was actually the third highest in our history,” spokeswoman Hannah Ortiz said.
Meanwhile, passenger volumes at much larger LAX were down nearly 4% for the first six months of this year compared to last year, with a total of 35.8 million travelers passing through its gates. Domestic traffic fell nearly 5% while international traffic edged down more than 1%. This is the first six-month stretch where both domestic and international traffic registered year-over-year drops since the dark days of the pandemic.
For the month of June, domestic and international traffic at LAX each fell by 2.4%.
In the bigger picture, LAX is the only one of the four airports that has yet to recover to pre-pandemic passenger levels. For the first half of the year, there were nearly 17% fewer passengers in total than for the same six months in 2019. A year ago, LAX passenger counts were down 14% for the first six months compared to 2019 levels, so the trend is moving backwards.
There was one ray of good news: Frontier Airlines Inc., which has returned to the airport in a big way over the past 12 months. The Denver-based carrier had pulled out entirely from LAX in 2021, then gradually re-entered the airport in late 2023 and early 2024. But in the 12 months ending in June, the airline added 11 daily round trip routes at LAX to places like Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, Salt Lake City and New York City. As a result, Frontier grew its passenger count at LAX more than six-fold, vaulting the airline back on to the airport’s 10 largest air carriers by market share.
More recently, Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. added two nonstop flights to Hong Kong and three flights to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in June. These additions should help Delta retain its ranking as the largest carrier by market volume at LAX.
Slight gains at Ontario and Burbank
During the first-half of 2025, passenger tallies at Ontario International and Hollywood Burbank airports showed relatively little movement compared to the same period last year. Ontario saw a 0.9% increase in passengers to 3.35 million for the first six months of this year, while Burbank saw a 0.8% increase to 3.04 million.
For Ontario, the small increase was enough to keep alive the airport’s unbroken string of 52 consecutive months of year-over-year gains in passengers. And the June total broke the previous June record set back in 2007.
“To see Ontario International set another record in June and maintain such strong momentum into the second half of the year speaks volumes about what we’ve built here,” said Atif Elkadi, chief executive of the Ontario International Airport Authority.
Hollywood Burbank had some minor swings up and down in passengers during the first half of the year. But the second half of this year may prove more volatile. Houston-based budget carrier Avelo Airlines Inc., which had already been scaling back its operations at Hollywood Burbank, announced July 14 that by the end of this year, it will shut down all operations at the airport that has served as its West Coast base. For the first half of the year, the airline reported 116,000 passengers at Hollywood Burbank, down more than 30% form the same six months last year.
Some of those vacant flight slots will be taken up by another budget carrier, Cottonwood, Utah-based Breeze Aviation Group. Known as Breeze Airways, the carrier will begin service at Hollywood Burbank with five flights in early 2026. Seattle-based Alaska Airlines Inc. announced last month it’s adding three flights at the airport in coming months.
Declines in cargo
Air cargo tonnage at the four airports serving Los Angeles County fell nearly 5% during the first six months of the year to nearly 1.5 million metric tons compared to the same period last year.
Roughly 98% of that total comes from just two of the airports: LAX and Ontario International. And the two airports moved in completely different directions.
LAX, which handles the most cargo of any among the airports, saw a more than 9% decline during the first six months of the year. Part of the drop may reflect the deepening global trade war as the United States imposed sanctions on most of its trading partners, and many of those countries retaliated.
But Ontario posted a nearly 10% gain in air cargo handled over those six months compared with the same stretch last year. This was led by a huge surge of more than 350% in air mail.
“Increasing shipments of mail carried by United Parcel Service led to significant growth in air cargo tonnage…highlighting the appeal of our facilities among cargo shippers,” said Elkadi of the Ontario International Airport Authority.
