Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport passenger numbers break another record
More travelers went through Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in March 2024 than any other month on record.
In March, Sky Harbor recorded 5,064,407 total passengers going through its terminals, a 9.7% increase from March 2023, the previous record, according to data released April 30 by the Phoenix Aviation Department.
Historically, March has always been the busiest month of the year at Sky Harbor, and it is the month with the most visitors to the Valley. Between Major League Baseball’s Cactus League spring training, a major NASCAR race and the pleasant weather, there are plenty of reasons bringing travelers to the Phoenix area in March.
Phoenix Sky Harbor, the region’s primary airport, surpassed 2019’s total passenger count in 2023, a sign that the aviation industry, at least in Phoenix, has recovered from the slump caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year ended up being the busiest year in Sky Harbor’s history, and Sky Harbor is outpacing 2023 by nearly 7% so far in 2024.
For the first quarter of the calendar year, Sky Harbor has had more than 13.1 million total passengers in 2024, up from the 12.2 million in the same period in 2023.
In March, 19,151 commercial flights landed at Sky Harbor, which was a 10.6% increase from the same month in 2023.
Sky Harbor’s two largest airlines — American Airlines (Nasdaq: AAL), Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) — played a major role in the increase in passengers in March with both seeing monthly total passenger count increase year-over-year by 10.1% and 11% respectively.
United Airlines (Nasdaq: UAL) and Frontier Airlines (Nasdaq: ULCC), the fourth and fifth largest commercial aviation operators at Sky Harbor, reported year-over-year gains of 23% and 26% in March.
Sky Harbor has continued to add new flights to new destinations, including a nonstop flight from Phoenix to Paris that will start later this year. A recently published study by Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business found that Sky Harbor, along with the two other airports owned by the city of Phoenix — Phoenix Deer Valley and Phoenix Goodyear — have an annual total economic impact of $44.3 billion on the state and region.