There’s been a whole lot of great news coming out of Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) lately – including new routes and a new low-cost carrier.

There’s also good news on a macro-level, with the official end of the pandemic and more people flying again. All of those factors bode well for continued growth in passenger traffic in and out of PTIA, which just released some pretty positive stats for April 2023 and the year to date.

The latest stats tell the same story that many stats in recent years have shown. The airport continues steady growth in passengers but still isn’t back to pre-pandemic levels.

The forward-looking stats are especially encouraging.

For instance, there was a sharp rise in departing seats – that’s seats that are either occupied or empty – being offered for June 2023. That number is now 103,551 which is up 20 percent over June 2022.

That’s still, however,13 percent lower than it was in June of 2019, the last year before the pandemic hit.

Overall, the steady growth continues. The number of passengers using the airport was up 4 percent in April 2023 over April 2022 and up 10 percent year to date. The numbers of passengers for April 2023, when compared to the same month in 2019, was down 22 percent.

The “load factor” – that is, the average percentage of airplane seats departing from PTIA that were filled with passengers – came to 61 percent in January 2023. January’s load factor was 5 percentage points higher than January of 2022, but 7 points lower than January 2019.

That load factor was 66 percent in February 2023, 4 points higher than February 2022, and 3 points lower than February 2019.

During the pandemic, when everyone was shopping online, cargo stats in and out of the airport shot up, but in the latest stats, the amount of cargo passing through was down 26 percent in April 2023 over April 2022 and down 24 percent year to date.

Cargo for April 2023 versus 2019 was down 3 percent.

 

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