July Passenger Traffic at PIT Highest in Nearly 20 Years

TSA: Expect busiest Labor Day ever for air travel 

By Evan Dougherty

Published August 26, 2024

Read Time: 4 mins

Pittsburgh International Airport’s traffic volumes continue to push into territory not seen since the latter days of the US Airways hub.

Driven by strong demand for air travel, PIT experienced its busiest July since 2005 with over 962,000 travelers flying in and out of the airport on scheduled flights during the month. July’s numbers followed PIT’s June traffic, which also reached a new two-decade high.

Last month’s traffic was up 11.2 percent over July 2023’s total of 865,000 passengers. It was also 5.3 percent above the 914,000 fliers that traveled through PIT in July 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Year-to-date, passenger volumes at PIT are up 9.4 percent. More than 5.7 million passengers have traveled through the airport, the most since July 2007.

Over 1.25 million scheduled seats were flown by PIT’s airlines for the month, a 19 percent jump from the same period a year ago, while capacity was 118 percent of July 2019’s figures.

“[July] was a very busy month again as passengers continue to take advantage of the flights, showing the strength of our market,” PIT CEO Christina Cassotis said at the Allegheny County Airport Authority’s monthly board meeting Aug. 23.

Along with strong demand, PIT’s capacity growth is tied to airlines “up-gauging” flights to larger aircraft.

Many carriers are ordering and receiving higher capacity Airbus A321neo and Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 aircraft for fleet modernization and future growth. In addition, airlines are phasing out 50-seat planes for larger regional aircraft, such as the Embraer E175, and even smaller mainline aircraft, like Airbus’ A319 and A220.

Ultra low-cost carriers (ULCCs) are also fueling PIT’s growth, including Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines. This year, Frontier began nonstop flights to Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia and Raleigh-Durham; Spirit also added daily, nonstop service to Boston, Houston-Intercontinental and New York-LaGuardia.

Internationally, Icelandair began service at PIT with nonstop, seasonal service to Reykjavik, Iceland, in May. In addition, PIT returned San Diego to its route map this summer with Breeze Airways and Southwest Airlines each launching nonstop, seasonal service to the market.

July also saw cargo volumes rise 14 percent year-over-year and 5.2 percent year-to-date at PIT. July’s increases come after UPS added additional mail cargo service at PIT with McDonnell Douglas MD-11 aircraft and Amazon Air added a second daily flight.