SAN JOSE — Passenger travel at San Jose International Airport is showing a loss of altitude, leaving the Silicon Valley aviation hub well short of its pre-coronavirus heights.
The airport handled 930,522 passengers in March — 13.4% above the passenger totals for February, but 3.6% below the passenger activity reported for March 2023. Over the 12 months that ended in March, the airport reported it handled 12.05 million passengers. That was down 0.4% from the 12.1 million passengers the South Bay travel hub accommodated during 2023.
The airport’s performance over the most recent 12-month period is far below the record heights San Jose achieved in 2019, the final year before the outbreak of the coronavirus and the resulting collapse of the worldwide travel industry due to government-imposed business shutdowns and transportation restrictions. The airport reported 15.65 million passengers in 2019, nearly 23% more.
“Prior to the pandemic, a significant portion of San Jose Airport’s traffic was driven by business travel,” airport officials said in emailed comments. “We suspect that the slow rebound in business travel, which is yet to fully recover globally, is having a significant impact on our recovery.”
The three major regional airports are all facing a feeble post-coronavirus recovery. Over the year-long period that ended in February 2024, Oakland International Airport handled 11.27 million passengers. That was 16% below the 13.38 million passengers Oakland accommodated in 2019.