Passenger traffic growth last year at Los Angeles International Airport slowed to 0.6%, the smallest growth rate since the Great Recession, airport officials reported Jan. 24. This came despite a pickup in December traffic that was due in large part to a calendar fluke.
Separately, Ontario International Airport officials reported on Jan. 22 that passenger traffic at that Inland Empire airfield rose 9.1% last year.
At LAX, nearly 88.1 million passengers went through the gates last year, up 0.61% from 87.5 million for all of 2018. That’s a significant slowdown from 2018’s growth rate of 3.5% and is the slowest growth since a 5.5% drop in passenger traffic in 2009 at the nadir of the Great Recession.
“For the last several years, we’ve been growing like gangbusters, but this year, we’re definitely seeing slower than average growth,” Justin Erbacci, interim chief executive with Los Angeles World Airports, told the Business Journal in October.
The slowdown was driven by a drop of 1.4% in international traffic to 25.7 million; international passenger traffic had declined throughout much of the year when compared to 2018. Airport officials in October told the Business Journal that the drop in international travel was due to a higher value of the dollar for international exchange rates and cutbacks in flights in certain over-saturated markets such as Mexico.
Domestic passenger traffic growth also slowed in 2019 to 1.45%, compared to a growth rate of 3.1% for 2018. Airport officials in October attributed some of this slowdown to flight cancellations prompted by the grounding of Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX planes after two crashes that killed all aboard.
The picture in December was a bit brighter, as passenger traffic rose 3.8% from December 2018 to nearly 7.5 million. The biggest jump came in domestic passenger traffic, which rose 4.7% to 5.35 million.
But this was largely due to a fluke in the calendar, according to airport officials last month. With Thanksgiving falling on the latest day possible last year, the Sunday that closed out the holiday weekend – traditionally one of the two busiest travel days of the entire year – fell on Dec. 1, meaning all those extra passengers were counted towards December totals. In 2018, the Sunday closing out the Thanksgiving holiday weekend came in November and those extra passengers were counted in the November statistics.
Air cargo volume at LAX also saw its worst year since the Great Recession, falling 5.5% compared to 2018 to 2.3 million tons for all of 2019. That compares with a 2.4% gain for all of 2018 compared to 2017 levels. In 2009, air cargo volume plunged 7.4% to less than 1.7 million tons.
Meanwhile, at Ontario International Airport, nearly 5.6 million passengers went through the gates last year, for a growth rate of 9.1% compared to 2018. That was the highest number of passengers at Ontario since the start of the Great Recession in 2008, when 6.2 million passengers went through the gates. But the growth rate, though high, slowed slightly from the 12.1% rate for 2018 compared to 2017.
The growth at Ontario was led by a huge jump of 33% in international passenger traffic to reach 304,000, though that was off of a small base of 228,000 passengers. In March 2018, China Air Lines began the first transoceanic international flight out of Ontario to Taiwan’s Taipei airport; a total of 175,000 passengers took that flight during its first 12 months.
Domestic passenger traffic at Ontario rose 8% during 2019 to reach 5.3 million.
And air cargo at Ontario rose 5.1% to 760,000 tons in large part due to the continued rise of the Inland Empire as a major warehouse and distribution hub.
Long Beach Airport and Hollywood Burbank Airport had yet to report December and full-year figures as of Jan. 24.
Healthcare/biomed, energy and infrastructure reporter Howard Fine can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @howardafine.
