San Jose, Oakland airports lose steam in summer passenger flights
Flight activity starts to tail off for East Bay, South Bay airline hubs
According to new reports, San Jose and Oakland airports are losing altitude in their respective efforts to recover from passenger traffic losses caused by the coronavirus.
According to the airport, passenger trips through the Silicon Valley aviation hub at San Jose International Airport decreased in August compared to the same month the previous year.
In a similar comparison, Oakland International Airport saw a decrease in the number of air travelers it handled in each of the last three months when compared to the same months the previous year, according to the air travel center.
San Jose Airport handled slightly less than 1.09 million passengers in August, a 0.2% decrease from the number of passengers handled by the South Bay travel complex in August 2022.
In August, Oakland Airport served slightly more than 977,300 passengers, a 10.1% decrease from the same month the previous year. June passenger totals at the East Bay airport were down 5.8% from the previous year, while July totals were down 7.1% from the same month in 2022.
The deterioration of the trend also means that both the East Bay and South Bay airports are moving further away from the heights attained in 2019, the final full year before the business shutdowns ordered by government officials to combat the spread of COVID-19.
San Jose International Airport handled a record-breaking 15.65 million passengers in 2019. However, for the 12 months ending in August 2023, the air travel hub only accommodated 12.15 million passengers, a 22.4% decrease from the previous year.
Similarly, in 2019, Oakland International Airport served 13.38 million passengers. However, the aviation complex handled just 11.38 million passengers in the 12 months ending in August of this year, a 15% decrease from the total in 2019. The all-time high for Oakland Airport was 13.59 million passengers in 2018.
San Francisco International Airport, on the other hand, handled 4.97 million passengers in July, up 17.6% from the July 2022 total. The statistics from July were the most recent available from that airport.
However, like the airports in Oakland and San Jose, SFO remains far below the levels reached in 2019 prior to the coronavirus outbreak.
San Francisco Airport served 47.78 million passengers in the fiscal year that ended in July. That was 16.9% less than the 57.49 million passengers handled by the airport in 2019.
