SAN ANTONIO – With a total of 8.62 million passengers in 2016, the San Antonio International Airport announced the seventh straight year-over-year increase in passengers.
The record-breaking increase over 2015's previous record was up 1.3 percent, with December alone seeing the most traffic for any given December at 730,551 passengers, also an increase of .7 percent.
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While domestic traffic was up 2.4 percent compared to December 2015, the airport saw a decline in international traffic by 24 percent because of the elimination of several flights to Mexico.
SAT officials said the decline in international passengers is also due, in part, to the devaluation of the peso to the U.S. dollar, which might be contributing to decreased leisure travel between the U.S. and Mexico.
Airport officials said that even though airlines routinely make monthly or seasonal adjustments to the number of flights and seats available to match demand trends, Southwest Airlines increased capacity in December 2016 by 9.6 percent by adding new service to Kansas City and additional flights to Houston, Dallas, El Paso and Phoenix.
Frontier Airlines also added new nonstop service in May 2016 to four destinations.
SAT said that when officials compared year-over-year domestic capacity changes, the results were based on:
- Allegiant Air: increased capacity to LAS in June 2016
- American Airlines: increased MIA service back to near daily in March during peak times
- Frontier Airlines: started new service to ATL, DEN, LAS and PHL in May 2016
- Southwest Airlines: began daily nonstop service to MCI effective Nov. 6
The airport will add a new international carrier on May 1. Air Canada will offer daily nonstop service to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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