Miami International Airport on a record flight path

Miami International Airport is on pace to handle 52 million passengers this year as it runs 2.56% ahead of last year’s record-shattering 50.65 million, latest statistics from the Miami-Dade Aviation Department show.

The total could be even higher if the heavy winter travel season surges past last year’s levels.

The airport expected 1.77 million passengers during the jam-packed 12-day Thanksgiving travel period that ended Tuesday of this week. Those figures are not yet available.

The airport served 26.2 million passengers during the first six months of 2023, a 2.6% increase over the first six months of 2022. Traffic rebounded post-covid last year to a record-breaking 50,684,396 passengers, a nearly 36% increase over 2021.

The latest official figures through August show the airport had carried 35,143,179 passengers during the first eight months of the year, up 2.56% from the 34,266,545 inbound and outbound passengers through Miami International in the first eight months of 2022.

The big change has been the surge back of international passengers, who historically provide far more visitor industry dollars per day than domestic passengers. International travel through the airport was up 10.21% through the airport through August as international travel regulations were eased and visa waits for travel from abroad abated.

In the first eight months of the year international passengers accounted for 41.2% of total airport traffic, still far below the virtual 50-50 split between international and domestic traffic that had been seen at times before the pandemic. That seems to indicate room for growth in international travel to Miami.
There is also room for growth in domestic travel, which so far this year is down 2.8% from last year.

Domestic travelers fell by 3.6% to 14.8 million through June, while international passengers at that point had increased 12% to 11.4 million.

Through June, Miami International was the fastest growing US airport, according to Airports Council International-North America. Prior to 2022, the most passengers the airport had served in a year was 45.9 million in 2019.

The airport’s growth trend was aided by new service launches in the second half of this year.

American Airlines, Miami International’s busiest airline, announced its largest winter schedule ever, with more than 380 peak-day flights serving 150 destinations by Dec. 20, increasing its seat capacity by 10% over last winter.

American’s winter schedule also included a November launch of year-round service to two new domestic routes, Portland, OR, and Sacramento, CA, and seasonal service to five other US cities: Buffalo, NY; Cedar Rapids, IA; Lexington, KY; Wichita, KS; and Wilmington, NC.

More international service is also coming from American, which announced daily service to Tulum, Mexico, starting next March 28 as the airline’s sixth Mexican route at Miami International and June 5 increases in daily frequency to Antigua; Anguilla; Georgetown, Guyana; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Provinciales, Turks and Caicos; and Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

In August American’s total of 16,289 aircraft arrivals and departures was up 5.75% from 15,403 last August. Passenger totals for American rose 3.31% in August to 2,487,866 from the total of 2,408,165 in August of 2022, figures produced by the airport show. Those figures show that American carried 57.1% of all passengers at the airport, exclusive of the airline’s affiliated service.

The airport is projected to reach 77 million travelers by 2040 and is moving forward on an expansion program to handled the expected growth.