Pittsburgh Air Travel Has Best Year in Nearly Two Decades

Holiday traffic pushed Pittsburgh International Airport to its highest yearly passenger total in almost two decades as December traffic rose 5.1 percent from last year, boosted by a late Thanksgiving travel season and Christmas and New Year surges.

December’s traffic pushed PIT to 9.95 million total passengers for 2024, surpassing 2019’s figure of 9.8 million by over 166,000 passengers, or 8.1 percent, marking the first time the airport’s annual traffic surpassed pre-pandemic levels. It’s also the highest yearly total for PIT since 2006 when 10 million annual passengers flew through the airport and US Airways was still the dominant airline.

A record number of Pittsburghers traveled through PIT as over 9.7 million travelers started and ended their trips in Pittsburgh last year. It’s the highest origin-and-destination (O&D) figure – non-connecting passengers – in the airport’s history dating back to 1980. It solidifies a dramatic change from the airport’s previous era as a major US Airways hub, where the majority of PIT’s passengers were connecting traffic – travelers flying from Point A to Point B while changing planes in Pittsburgh.

“It’s a big flip in terms of that percentage,” said PIT CEO Christina Cassotis at the Allegheny County Airport Authority’s monthly board meeting on Jan. 17, adding that PIT, “is a strong origin-and-destination airport.”

Allegiant, United and Spirit aircraft at PIT on October 10, 2024. (Photo by Beth Hollerich)

Fueling the growth has been PIT’s ongoing strategy of diversifying its air service portfolio by adding service on a variety of carriers, increasing competition in the Pittsburgh market and maximizing choices for both business and leisure travelers.

No airline owns more than 30 percent market share at PIT, a contrast to when US Airways flew 90 percent of the airport’s passengers. Southwest Airlines (26.6 percent) and American Airlines (22.2 percent) are the airport’s top carriers by market share, followed by Delta Air Lines (16.9 percent) and United Airlines (14.8 percent.) Ultra-low-cost carriers – Allegiant Air, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Sun Country Airlines – combined for 15.3 percent of the airport’s total passengers in 2024, up from 14.3 percent in 2023.

“We still see a very strong, diversified portfolio,” Cassotis said. “Not only in terms of [the number of] carriers but also types of carriers.”

Major domestic additions at PIT in 2024 included Breeze Airways and Southwest Airlines launching seasonal, nonstop service to San Diego last summer, a market that hadn’t been served since 2018 and one of PIT’s top unserved destinations prior to its addition. Frontier Airlines began nonstop, low-fare service to Philadelphia in May, a first for PIT in over a decade. In November, Delta Air Lines resumed daily, year-round service to Salt Lake City for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More additions are coming in 2025. In April, American Airlines will begin daily nonstop service to Los Angeles and JetBlue will return service to New York-JFK. Southwest Airlines resumed nonstop flights to Miami in January and Allegiant Air will begin service to Phoenix on Feb. 7. In addition, Breeze Airways is expanding service to several routes in 2025, including Los Angeles, Portland, Maine, and Raleigh-Durham.

PIT’s international traffic surpassed 195,000 international passengers in 2024, a 30 percent increase from 2023, spurred by Icelandair launching seasonal service to Reykjavik, Iceland, in May and British Airways’ continued growth on its year-round service to London Heathrow. International travel in Pittsburgh is expected to grow again 2025 as British Airways will upgrade service to London Heathrow to daily starting March 30 and Icelandair will resume its seasonal Reykjavik service a month earlier in 2025, with flights returning April 17.

Icelandair and British Airways aircraft parked on PIT’s Concourse C on June 28, 2024. (Photo by Evan Dougherty)

PIT’s cargo operations also saw growth in 2024 as volumes rose past pre-pandemic levels set in 2019. More than 200 million pounds of cargo was transported through PIT last year, up nearly 5 percent from 2023 and up over 16 percent from a decade ago.

While FedEx continues to be PIT’s cargo market leader with 45 percent share, UPS increased its share to 33.4 percent in 2024, thanks to additional capacity added by the carrier since acquiring the United States Postal Service contract last spring. Amazon Air also increased its share from 10 percent to 14.7 percent at the airport. British Airways has also contributed to PIT’s cargo growth as a key link to the global freight market, with belly space on its London service now accounting for 3.2 percent of the airport’s total freight.