Some small airports see return to normal in passenger traffic

In Florida, Key West International Airport is busier than normal, while Miami International has half as many passengers as it did before the pandemic.

In the West, big-city airports — in San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Seattle — are serving a fraction of their typical traveler volume, between 24% and 46%. But smaller regional airports, near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Colorado ski country, have passenger volume as much as 12% higher than this time last year.

This pattern is typical across the country, detailed new data shows. Large hub airports have just a fraction of the travelers they did at this time last year, even as Americans are returning to flying, particularly to vacation destinations.

“You see airports in Colorado, Montana, Key West having recovered quite a lot,” said Kevin Williams, a Yale economist who studies air travel data. “And then you have a lot of major cities that are still down quite a lot.”

He has compiled granular Transportation Security Administration data that tracks how many people move through airport screening checkpoints. It shows that, with millions being vaccinated daily and states rolling back pandemic restrictions, Americans are returning to leisure travel in large numbers.

But airports that serve major cities are still serving far fewer travelers than they did early last year. Washington National, close to the District of Columbia, is down 70% in passenger volume. San Francisco International is serving a quarter of its typical volume, and Kennedy Airport in New York is at about one-third.

This may reflect in part the slower return of business travel. These hub airports also tend to have many international flights, which are expected to take longer to recover. Additionally, many urban attractions for leisure travelers — Broadway theaters in New York City, the Smithsonian museums in Washington — remain closed because of the pandemic.