HARLINGEN — Valley International Airport continues to claw back passengers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was down just 44 percent in total passenger enplanements for October.
While it may not sound like progress, in May passenger traffic at VIA was off 82 percent.
Southwest Airlines has long been the dominant air passenger carrier at Valley International, but October saw major gains for competitors when it comes to market share.
In 2019, Southwest had 62 percent of the passenger flights in October, but this year that dropped to 41 percent.
“As we continue to climb out of this huge hole that COVID dug this year for us, it was interesting to look at the market share as you can see there in 2020 compared to 2019, the reduction in capacity and frequency of Southwest Airlines allowed United and American to step up to the plate,” Marv Esterly, director of aviation at VIA, told the airport board last week.
“They gained a lot of market share in the last couple of months as you can see there, 30 percent for United and 24 percent for American Airlines,” he added. “They’re doing really well. Southwest Airlines was down and that’s really a lot to due to the reduction in middle seats that have actually come back now. We’re starting to see flights going up to 130 passengers with Southwest.”
The Valley’s other airports, Brownsville and McAllen, show similar drops in overall passenger numbers, which is something which has been occurring nationwide since March.
The entrance sign at Valley International Airport is seen Monday afternoon in Harlingen. Airport officials report passenger numbers in May are down 82 percent year-over-year.
For October, according to preliminary numbers issued by the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, passenger traffic was down 62 percent year-over-year. Carriers moved just 29.9 million passengers during the month, compared to 78.3 million a year ago.
It should be noted that 62 percent decline was the smallest year-to-year monthly decrease since COVID landed in March.
With reduced travel demand, either for business or leisure, the Harlingen market showed a drop in October of 70 percent in available seats for all air carriers.
“The real story here is American Airlines,” Esterly said. “American Airlines has actually increased this year over last year, the number of seats in the market with the larger aircraft, and they’re up and running. Their load factors are very well, 82 percent, and they were up 32.9 percent, almost 33 percent, in October, so doing really well.”
