The number of domestic passengers at major airports in Southern California, including Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), has finally recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels. The airport and aviation industry, which had fallen into a dark period of a sharp drop in passenger numbers amid the blow of the pandemic since March 2020, have finally come out of a long tunnel.
In the case of LAX, the number of international passengers, whose normalization process started late, is still lower than the pre-pandemic level, but the total number of passengers has recovered to over 75% of the pre-pandemic level, raising expectations that full normalization, including international flights, is not far off.
According to the Los Angeles Business Journal (LBJ) on the 13th, as of June, when the most recent airport passenger numbers were officially counted, the monthly number of passengers at Burbank Airport and Ontario Airport, which are exclusively for domestic flights, among the four major airports in LA County before the pandemic It was counted to exceed the level in June 2019. Burbank Airport saw about 8% more passengers in June compared to 2019, and Ontario Airport saw about 4% more passengers.
In the case of Long Beach Airport, another domestic airport, the number of passengers in June was 4% less than in June 2019, but the total number of passengers at these three Los Angeles County domestic airports is comparable to that in 2019, before the pandemic. Overall, it was found to be 3.5% higher.
In the case of Burbank Airport, the total number of passengers reached 542,000 in June, an increase of 51% compared to June last year. Ontario Airport’s increase in passengers was 19% compared to a year ago.
According to data released by the Los Angeles Airport Corporation (LAWA), the total number of passengers in June exceeded 6 million for the first time since January 2020, breaking the highest number of passengers since the pandemic.
Last June, the number of LAX passengers totaled 6,118,003, including 4,496,561 domestic and 1,621,442 international flights, which is still 24% lower than in June 2019, before the pandemic, but This is an increase of 25.2% compared to the previous month.
In particular, the number of passengers using LAX international routes, including routes to Korea, where normalization began in earnest recently, increased by 112.9% from June last year, more than doubling.
The normalization trend of LAX becomes clearer when looking at the number of users increased during the first half of this year. According to LAWA data, the total number of LAX users in the first half of this year from January to June was 30,646,436, an increase of 70.6% compared to the first half of last year (17,967,459).
In particular, the number of international passengers increased by 157.3% from 2,694,811 in the first half of last year to 6,932,742 in the first half of this year, showing a 2.5-fold increase.
In the first half of this year, the total number of passengers at the four major airports in LA County, including LAX, Burbank, Ontario, and Long Beach, reached 37.6 million, a 75% increase from the first half of last year.