SAN JOSE — Passenger totals at San Jose International Airport have stalled, an unsettling reminder the Silicon Valley aviation hub faces turbulence as it seeks to recover from economic woes spawned by the coronavirus.
During October, San Jose Airport accommodated nearly 1.06 million passengers, according to a post on the airport’s website.
The 1.06 million figure was about 2.3% below the slightly more than 1.08 million passengers who traveled through San Jose Airport in October 2022, a review of the airport’s statistics shows.
However, the October figures for this year are 3.8% higher than the total for September, when slightly fewer than 1.02 million passengers traveled through the San Jose transportation complex, the airport reported.
The airport’s performance for October marked the third straight month that the travel center reported a monthly result that was less than the same month the year before. The airport’s year-to-year comparisons began to falter in August.
This also means that San Jose Airport remains far below the heights to which the travel hub had soared during 2019, the final year before the outbreak of the coronavirus ushered in wide-ranging business shutdowns.
State and government agencies crafted the lockdowns to combat the spread of the deadly bug, but the restrictions also forced the travel and hotel sectors to nosedive.
Over the one-year period that ended in October, San Jose Airport handled 12.09 million passengers. That was 22.7% below the total for 2019 when the airport handled 15.65 million passengers, a record high.
Still, the report offered some hopeful signs, even though the current activity remains well below the airport’s pre-coronavirus heights.
The 12.09 million passengers who traveled through San Jose Airport over the 12 months ending in October was 9.5% higher than the 11.04 million passengers that the airport handled during the one-year period that ended in October 2022.
Plus, San Jose Airport has accommodated at least 1 million passengers during 14 of the last 18 months. The airport has handled at least 1 million passengers for the last seven consecutive months.
Ultimately, despite the short-term spotty performance for San Jose Airport, the aviation hub is on track to achieve its third consecutive year of improved passenger activity following the implosion for air travel in 2020, should current trends continue.
