Bradley airport traffic up 7.8% in 2023
WINDSOR LOCKS — Nearly 6.25 million passengers used Bradley International Airport in 2023, a 7.8% increase over 2022, according to newly released data from the Connecticut Airport Authority.
Bradley had 5.74 million people fly into and out of its Hartford-area location in 2022, and 4.61 million the year before that. The Windsor Locks-based airport historically isNew England’s second busiest airport, after Boston’s Logan International.
The airport’s pre-pandemic high in terms of passenger traffic over the past decade came in 2019 when 6.75 million passengers used Bradley. The alltime high for the airport in terms of passenger traffic, occurred in 2001 with 7.36 million passengers using the airport that fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001, when Bradley was operated by the Connecticut Department of Transportation.
Since July 2013, Bradley has been operated by the quasi-public agency, the Connecticut Airport Authority, which also oversees the state’s other general aviation airports: Danielson, Groton-New London, Hartford-Brainard, Waterbury-Oxford, and Windham.
Brian Spyros, a spokesman for the Authority, said agency officials believe passenger traffic at Bradley will continue to grow, bolstered by the Utah-based low cost airline Breeze Airways. The airline plans to add seven routes out of Windsor Locks in May, Spyros said.
Michael Boyd, president of the Coloradobased airline consultant Boyd Group International, said continued growth in Bradley’s passenger traffic will depend on whether Breeze sees growth in those added routes and if they increase the number of planes it flies from there.
“There’s a healthy market for travel right now,” Boyd said.
Bradley also got a boost when the Irish airline Aer Lingus resumed its service between Dublin from Windsor Locks in March 2023 after a two-year hiatus, he said. The airline expanded the number of nonstops from Connecticut across the Atlantic in October, Spyros said.
“Aer Lingus took a twomonth break in service at the beginning of the year and has resumed service, so it hasn’t quite been a full year,” he said. “The flight has been quite popular with travelers because passengers returning to Bradley clear customs and immigration in Dublin, which means when they get to Connecticut, they can just walk off the plane as if they were on a domestic flight.
American Airlines was the leader in terms of passenger activity into and out Bradley International in 2023 with 1.31 million travelers. Delta Airlines is the airport’s second most active carrier, with 1.18 million travelers flying into and out of the airport.
Donald Klepper-Smith, an economist with South Carolina-based DataCore Partners, said there is still a pent-up demand for travel and consumers are using some of the wealth created by growth in their stock portfolios on travel.
“There is still a lot of uncertainty because of continued inflation and with everything that is going on in the world,” Klepper-Smith said. “So some people may be saying they had better take that trip overseas now because they don’t know if they will be able to do it at this time next year.”
Airfares in February were down 6.1% compared in 2023, and they are even slightly lower than February 2020, according to the latest set of Consumer Price Index data released in March 2024 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.