HARLINGEN — Valley International Airport showed improvement in passenger numbers over last year, with total enplaned passengers in September hitting 35,060, a 51.8 percent increase.
The heavy passenger load again was led by Southwest Airlines, which enplaned 23,500 passengers in September, a 97.9 percent increase compared to last year.
“Considering it is one of the slowest months of the year and we had over 35,000 enplaned passengers, to put that into perspective a little bit, if you go back to 2019 I believe it is, we hit 35,000 on Spring Break month,” Marv Esterly, director of aviation, told the airport board this week. “And that was the best month that we have. At 35,000 in September, the slowest month, it’s just amazing, really.”
Southwest has massively increased the number of seats on offer in the Harlingen market, which has compensated for the loss of Frontier Airlines and Viva Aerobus, both of which pulled out of service at VIA.
Other airlines are still having issues with adequate pilot and crew numbers.
“United still probably has crew issues so those numbers are down. You see them down 36 percent,” Esterly said. “They just don’t have the seats in the market and the size of aircraft.”
United still managed to board 2,280 passengers but that total was 12.5 percent under September 2021.
“American actually added additional seats and were back to where we were. We kind of dropped there for a little bit at the end of the summer, but we’re back to 7,000 enplanements,” he said, which was a 24.5-percent increase over last year.
One of the brighter spots in the enplanement tally was Minneapolis-based Sun Country Airlines, which over the summer added a popular direct flight from Harlingen to Cancun to its schedule.
Perhaps buoyed by that success, at least in part, Sun Country has moved up its seasonal flights and actually began them in September instead of its usual October schedule.
“Those flights are full. They’re doing really well, both ways, so it’s really telling Sun Country exactly what we’ve been telling them for years now,” Esterly said. “That you could possibly do this all year around if you could, because of all the people who have actually relocated in the area down here and they still want to fly back and forth to see their friends and family throughout the summer.
“Also, it’s kind of showing, I think a little bit, we were talking about this, heating bills,” he added. “The cost of heating your house is going up. So why not board up your house if you’re a Winter Texan and come down here a little earlier? That might make some sense as well.”
Air cargo continued to decline in Harlingen, after the booming trade FedEx, DHL and Southwest were doing during the height of the pandemic.
“Air cargo is just not where it used to be, but it’s not horrible,” Esterly said. “We’re 11 percent down in enplaned cargo and also total cargo or deplaned cargo is down 7.1 percent and total cargo down 8.7 percent for the year.
“We’re seeing that and a lot of that has to still do with the chain, getting products in and out,” he added. “I’m sure the economy and inflation, a lot of things, are starting to slow down a little bit.”
