DBIA Traffic Goes Up For 6th Straight Month

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Daytona Beach, FL - Despite a reduced number of airline seats because of an ongoing construction project, passenger traffic at Daytona Beach International Airport keeps going up. A 2.2% increase was recorded for last July compared to the July prior, according to officials at the Volusia County-run airport. "July marks the sixth straight month of passenger traffic increases over 2017," stated DBIA Director Rick Karl. "Unfortunately, the ongoing taxiway improvement project did impact Delta's [passenger] capacity for the month." 66,134 passengers flew in or out of the airport in July 2018, a jump of 1,388 compared to July 2017's numbers. DBIA Business Development Director Jay Cassens tells us July's numbers could have grown more had weather issues not forced the cancellation of some American Airlines flights. "We've been talking about it for months that American and Delta continue to add flights," Cassens mentioned during a recent interview on WNDB's Volusia Today. "It was true again in July for American. They added more flights, which offset some of the capacity losses with Delta." Around 4,000 seats were lost for the month, per Cassens. DBIA closed its main runway for 30 days as part of its $35 million renovation project, a move which forced Delta Airlines to use smaller planes for the runways which were available at the time, according to Karl. "Had we not had the reduction in capacity on Delta, passenger traffic would have been up significantly over 2017," Karl noted. "We anticipate the positive trends to continue in 2018, with capacity on Delta and American continuing to grow over the next few months and heading into the fall." Year-over-year figures show a 3.3% increase in passenger traffic, with 735,464 people passing through DBIA between August 2017 and July 2018. 711,897 passengers traveled through the facility during August 2016 and July 2017, per airport officials.