Daytona Beach, FL – Passenger traffic on flights in and out of Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB) went down 9% in April of this year compared to April of 2016.
61,606 airplane passengers were recorded as flying in and out of DAB in April of this year, where 67,577 passengers flew in and out of DAB in April of last year.
“A weather system in Atlanta in April produced significant flight cancellations for our largest airline, Delta, with 22 cancellations,” says Rick Karl, Airport Director. “The weather event caused a ripple effect throughout Delta’s system, lasting longer than expected and occurring during one of our busiest times of the year, Easter week.”
“And even beyond that, we had a lot of passengers that got diverted to Jacksonville or Orlando and it really affected the whole operations for the entire week,” says Jay Cassens, Director of Business Development at DAB.
“In spite of the canceled flights, passenger traffic numbers are still up compared to April of 2015,” says Karl. There was a recorded 7.3% increase from last year’s 652,724 DAB flyers to this year’s 702,145 DAB flyers."
“We’ll probably see things decline a little bit compared to March and April but we’d see, probably, a relatively flat growth, it may even be down a percent or so over the next couple months,” says Cassens. “But, in the fall, we do see Delta adding capacity to the market so we should see some growth near the end of the year.”
In addition to Delta adding more capacity in the late summer or fall, JetBlue especially has made some advances, despite the decreasing numbers.
“Although unusual and disruptive weather this spring has impacted our projected passenger numbers, we continue to see JetBlue making progress,” says Karl.
“JetBlue did really well. The last two months were 90% full on all of their flights, so that’s really good to see. They’ve been up in their load factor which is the percentage of how full they are,” says Cassens. “They’ve been up every month this year over last year, so definitely very positive for the JetBlue flight and growth we’ve seen this year. So, that’s the silver lining to this month.”
Photo courtesy sevenMaps7 and Shutterstock.com.
Copyright Southern Stone Communications 2017.
