The Piedmont Triad Airport Authority – the board of seven that runs Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) – doesn’t have the complete picture as to how the airport fared in terms of passenger traffic in 2022 because there’s still a month of data the board hasn’t seen yet.
However, even without knowing what December will bring, the airport officials found out this week that PTIA isn’t finishing the year on a strong note in terms of flyers.
The November 2022 statistics were released at the board’s Tuesday, Dec. 20 meeting. The airport has seen some good progress since the start of the pandemic, when, one day in 2020, PTIA had more people working there than flying in and out of the airport.
This November, stats show a turn down: Passenger traffic in and out of PTIA was down 7 percent in November of 2022 compared with November 2021.
However, despite that, passenger traffic was up an impressive 29 percent year to date in 2023.
The airport still hasn’t hit one key milestone it’s been focused on for the past two years – trying to get the passenger numbers up to the same levels they were in 2019 before the world shut down almost completely. Passenger traffic in November 2022 versus November 2019 was still down 25 percent.
In other stats released on Dec.20, the amount of cargo going in and out of PTIA was up 3 percent in November 2022 over November 2021, and up 4 percent year to date. Cargo for November of 2022, when compared with November 2019 was up 45 percent.
Total departing seats booked out of PTIA for January 2023 is 88,666 – up 7 percent over January 2022, but down 16 percent over January 2019.
The load factor – which is the average percentage of airplane seats departing from PTIA with a passenger in the seat – was 85 percent in September 2022. September’s load factor was 9 points higher than September 2021, and 2 points higher than September 2019.
I flew out of PTIA for the first time in early December. It compares very favorably to some other airports I have flown out of in terms of ease of getting in and out of, notably Albuquerque’s Sunport, RDU, and Ontario CA. Keep up the good work PTIA!
Suggestion(s)-
1)Provide better fares! Other airports are offering lower airfare prices.
2) Provide a free parking lot for those who are picking up family members on incoming flights. Waiting on a family member for an inbound flight I parked in a parking lot that I was not marked as “Uber” parking and told to leave by an airport parking meter person. Really! Was told this was for “Uber and taxi parking “ only. So much for providing a parking lot for those who are waiting to pick up family members who by the way pay a tax on the airline ticket to use PTI.
There is free parking right outside the
doors going into the airport on the departure and arrival levels.
Airport Ambassador
Could it be that more and more people are running out of money, especially at these high ticket prices?
Or could it be the omnipresent ugly flying conditions?
Both
Read about this past weekend’s SNAFU at Southwest airlines. ALL of these recent problems with the airline industry are due to govt meddling – covid shutdowns. The govt virtually destroyed one of our main industries, and then gave them zillions of dollars to prop them up (while few actually flew). Now, it will take years for the industry to get it back together.