Norfolk flight schedules up for July after drop
NORFOLK — Norfolk International Airport continued to see a steep drop in passenger traffic in May as the COVID-19 pandemic has discouraged travel, but there are signs of improvement.
Despite traffic dropping 87.2% from May 2019, to 45,712 passengers, the numbers were slightly better than April, and airlines appear to be adding more departures in July. Still, a year ago, the airport had 356,894 passengers fly in and out during the same month.
In April, just 18,687 people traveled through the airport, a 94.2% drop compared with the year prior. Richmond International Airport reported similarly dire numbers, with traffic there dropping 96.3% in April to 13,560 travelers. Traffic at Newport NewsWilliamsburg International Airport dropped to 1,932 passengers in April, down from 17,178 in March.
So far, traffic at Norfolk airport is down by nearly half for the first five months of the year, with 769,034 travelers using the airport in that time versus 1.5 million a year ago.
Travel appears to be picking up, though.
The number of scheduled departing flights out of Norfolk International Airport in July, so far, is 997 — up from 593 in May and 756 in June, according to departure data from the airport.
Frontier Airlines appears to be reviving its flights to Denver this month and next month, but isn’t flying to RaleighDurham despite seven departures in May. Allegiant Airlines is also adding monthly departures from Norfolk, except to Punta Gorda Airport in Florida where no flights are scheduled.
From Norfolk, American Airlines and Delta still aren’t offering nonstop flights to New York’s JFK and LaGuardia airports, and United Airlines still has no scheduled departures to Denver and Houston. Southwest also isn’t flying nonstop NorfolkDenver and Norfolk-Chicago this month and next, but it’s reviving departures in July to Nashville and Orlando.
The number of people traveling nationwide finally exceeded 500,000 in one day on Thursday, according to data the Transportation Security Administration posts daily, a number that hadn’t been reached since March 21. At it’s lowest point, just 87,534 people went through TSA checkpoints at airports nationwide on April 14.
Traffic is still far from pre -pandemic levels. While 502,209 people went through TSA checkpoints Thursday, 2.67 million had done so on the same weekday a year ago.