A record number of passengers flew in and out of San Diego’s international airport in 2025, coinciding with the debut late in the year of the first phase of a new Terminal 1.

Even with the partial shutdown of several gates during construction that inhibited Southwest Airlines’ long-term expansion plans here, air travel was robust enough last year to compensate for that.

A year-end report released Wednesday by the airport revealed that 25.32 million passengers flew through Terminals 1 and 2 in 2025, representing a slight increase of 0.3% over 2024, which had been a record-setting year.

San Diego’s airport “has once again surpassed its highest recorded passenger volume,” said Kimberly Becker, who will soon be retiring as CEO of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. “With the opening of our new Terminal 1 and continued expansion of airline service, 2025 stands out as a truly exceptional year.”

Various factors accounted for the increased volume, among them the addition of more than a dozen new or resumed nonstop flights.

Alaska Airlines, which has been aggressively expanding its presence in San Diego, led the way with six new flights, including a nonstop to Reagan National airport. Frontier Airlines and Southwest both added a few nonstops, but more notable were two new international flights. Copa Airlines debuted its flight to Panama City, and KLM now operates a nonstop to Amsterdam, which will resume service Saturday following a seasonal pause in October.

The two new overseas flights made a difference, contributing to a 24% year-over-year increase in overseas passengers, the Airport Authority reported. Expanded service by Lufthansa and Japan Airlines to Munich and Tokyo, respectively, also helped boost the number of trans-oceanic passengers, the airport said.

While the new 19-gate Terminal 1 was cited as a factor in the higher passenger traffic, that’s partly because JetBlue and Breeze Airways relocated from Terminal 2 to the new facility after it opened in late September.

During its first full months of operation — October through December — passenger traffic increased by more than 11% compared to the same period in 2024 when the former Terminal 1 was in operation. And even when the move by JetBlue and Breeze is excluded, Terminal 1 still saw an increase in passengers — 5% — during the last three months of the year compared with 2024, said airport spokesperson Nicole Hall.

Throughout much of the construction period, five of the terminal’s 19 gates had to be temporarily shut down, which accounts for why the overall number of passengers in Terminal 1 declined 3% year over year, the airport authority said.

Now that it’s open, Southwest is ready to return to its expansion plans.

Shortly before the new terminal debuted, Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told the Union-Tribune that between upcoming schedule announcements in October and March, “we’ll be back to our pre-pandemic highs, and after that, we will then have a chance to expand even more.”

The Terminal 1 project is expected to be completed by 2028, when there will be a total of 30 gates.

Last year, Terminal 1 served 9.68 million passengers, while Terminal 2 handled 15.64 million, the Airport Authority said. In all, 17 airlines operate out of San Diego, providing nonstop service to more than 85 destinations worldwide.

While U.S. air travel overall has continued to grow, last year was notable for declines in international travel into the U.S. as a result of steep tariffs imposed on various countries by the Trump administration. Travel from Canada was notably down compared to previous years due to strained relations between the two countries.

Domestically, there were 774,377,101 passengers traveling on U.S. airlines through November of last year, according to statistics that the Bureau of Transportation provided to the Union-Tribune. That compares with 782,638,274 during the same 11-month period in 2024.