San Jose airport passenger activity soars, COVID recovery strengthens

SAN JOSE — San Jose International Airport’s passenger activity has begun to soar back to its pre-coronavirus altitude, although the Silicon Valley aviation hub has yet to fully recover from its COVID-linked maladies.

The air travel complex reported that it accommodated slightly more than 964,900 passengers during March, according to new activity statistics released by San Jose International.

The March totals were up 16.7% from the same month the year before, the new report shows.

“Compared to this time last year, San Jose International Airport is seeing nearly 17% growth in our passenger traffic and just over 30% added parking revenues,” said Keonnis Taylor, an airport spokesperson.

Over the 12 months that ended in March, San Jose’s airport handled 11.99 million passengers, this news organization’s analysis of the airport statistics shows.

“We see this as a good sign that the airport is on a positive growth trajectory,” Taylor said.

The current reports show a steady pattern of improvement at the airport over the 24-month stretch that ended in March.

Despite the upswing, the most recent 12 months of passenger activity at SJC remains 23.4% below the record level for passengers that was achieved just before the coronavirus outbreak.

Passenger travel activity at San Jose, measured by the combination of arriving and departing passengers, totaled an all-time high of 15.65 million air travelers in 2019, the final year before the onset of government-mandated shutdowns to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Oakland International Airport and San Francisco International Airport are similarly stuck well below their pre-coronavirus levels.

San Jose’s activity cratered — as was the case with the Oakland and San Francisco airports, as well as airports worldwide — during 2020 when the coronavirus shutdowns gripped the globe.