SAN JOSE — All three Bay Area airports remain well below pre-coronavirus levels — but San Jose and Oakland airports are well behind the pace of San Francisco airport’s post-COVID recovery.
Adding to the troubling trends, 2024 passenger trends for San Jose International Airport in the South Bay and San Francisco Bay’s Oakland International Airport in the East Bay are lagging behind 2023 results, according to analysis of aviation centers’ monthly reports this news organization.
Oakland International Airport, September 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Unlike its two smaller competitors in the Bay Area, San Francisco Airport — which is in a legal battle with Oakland Airport — is seeing an uptick in 2024 compared to 2023.
Here are the current trends for the number of passengers served at the Bay Area’s three major airports through September, the month with the most up-to-date statistics for aviation hubs:
– San Jose Airport averaged 981,000 passenger trips per month in the first nine months of 2024, a decrease of 2.6% from the 2023 monthly average of 1.01 million passengers.
– Oakland Airport averaged 920,000 passenger trips per month in 2024, a 1.7% decrease from 937,000 passenger trips per month in 2023.
– San Francisco Airport averaged 4.31 million passengers in the first nine months of 2024, a 3.1% increase from the monthly average of 4.18 million passenger trips in 2023.
San José International Passenger numbers at the airport increased over the summer but then began to decline after the end of the holiday travel period.
Although San Francisco Airport is showing a new level of activity, passenger traffic through the three airports is still far from the heights they were flying at just before coronavirus-related business closures began in March 2020.
San Jose International Airport experienced the slowest recovery from its COVID-related illnesses.
In the 12 months ended September, San Jose Airport handled 11.83 million passengers, a 24.4% decrease from 2019, when the South Bay aviation hub handled a record 15.65 million passengers. That was the last full year before the COVID shutdowns began.
In the year ended September, San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport handled 11.13 million passengers, a 16.8% decline from 2019, when the East Bay travel complex handled 13.38 million passengers.
San Francisco Airport handled 51.14 million passengers in the 12 months ended September, an 11.1% decrease from the 57.49 million passengers SFO served in 2019.
The increasing use of remote technologies to hold meetings has reduced interest in traveling to various business-oriented destinations such as San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.
This dynamic, in turn, has hindered travel through major airports that handle business travel in the Bay Area.
