It’s already late October believe it or not, and Christmas and New Year’s will be here before you know it.
It’s not known how things will turn out for passenger traffic in and out of Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) when the data for 2023 closes out in three months, but, so far at least, those statistics are shaping up to look like 2023 will be a very solid year of growth for passenger traffic.
At a Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 24 meeting of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority – the seven-member board that oversees airport operations – the statistics presented by staff to the Airport Authority signaled steady progress.
The number of passengers in and out of PTIA was up 12 percent in September 2023 over September 2022 – and up 11 percent year to date.
The numbers still aren’t back up to pre-pandemic levels. The number of passengers in September 2023 versus September 2019 was down 13 percent.
In other news, the amount of cargo in and out of PTIA continued to drop as it has been doing recently. Cargo was down 14 percent in September 2023 compared to September 2022 and it was down 20 percent year to date compared to this time last year. Cargo for September 2023 versus 2019 was up 25 percent.
In other stats released by the Airport Authority this week…
• Total scheduled departing seats – with or without people in them – for December 2023, is 89,936, up 7 percent over departing seats in December 2022, but down 20 percent when compared with December 2019.
• The load factor – which is the average percentage of airplane seats departing from PTIA that were filled with passengers – was 82 percent in July 2023. July’s load factor was 3 percentage points less than that of July of 2022, and 8 percentage points higher than July 2019.
What is the Rhino’s fetish with PTI utilization numbers?
It’s all a matter of spin, it seems.
Scott is a great salesman for the airport (I don’t know why), but the cold hard numbers are brutal. We’re still not close to matching pre-Covid numbers.
Where is the Cell Phone Lot at PTI?
Parked in the Uber lot waiting on a flight for son since PTI has NO cell phone lot and informed I had to move due to this being only an Uber lot by their parking non-sworn meter maid. I believe someone call her as it was later in the evening. Went to another location until his flight arrived. Guess they wanted me to pay for parking while I waited instead of offering a cell phone lot.
Note- your airline ticket does include a fee for PTI.