Reno airport posts best month in 20 years despite U.S. travel slowdown

By Jason Hidalgo, Reno Gazette Journal 

Reno’s airport continued to shake off a slowdown in U.S. air travel, posting its best month for passenger counts in two decades.

Reno-Tahoe International Airport served 489,000 passengers in August — its highest monthly tally since September 2005.

The August numbers put the Reno airport’s total passenger counts for the year at 3.3 million. Based on the numbers, Reno-Tahoe International Airport is on pace to reach an annual count of 4.9 million passengers by the end of 2025.

The Reno airport is hoping that new routes will help boost passenger counts toward the end of the year. The upcoming options include the return of Alaska Airlines’s San Diego route as a year-round flight by this October at Reno-Tahoe International Airport. Frontier is also launching a new Reno-Phoenix route on Nov. 22, according to the Reno-Tahoe airport authority.

Should the passenger projections hold up, Reno-Tahoe International Airport will beat last year’s annual count of 4.8 million passengers. Last year’s annual passenger count was also the highest in 20 years, according to the airport.

The Reno airport’s performance is bucking a nationwide decrease in passenger traffic counts, which has hit another Nevada market especially hard. Unlike Reno, which is up for the year, passenger counts for Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas were down by 4% for the first half of the year.

Nationwide, although airline traffic started the year in positive territory — up by 1% compared to the same month last year in January — the numbers dropped for each following month through June, which is the latest period available from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: Reno airport posts best month in 20 years despite U.S. travel slowdown

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