Passenger traffic declined at all four local airports in July for the second straight month as higher fuel costs drove up fares and prompted consumers to cut back on unnecessary flights.<\/p>\n
This second consecutive monthly drop also makes definitive the lack of a forecast passenger surge resulting from the FIFA World Cup matches played in Inglewood during June and July.<\/p>\n
Overall, 8.53 million travelers went through the gates at Los Angeles International, Ontario International, Hollywood Burbank and Long Beach airports in July, down 2.5% from the same month last year.<\/p>\n
Two of the four airports \u2013 Hollywood Burbank and Long Beach \u2013 posted drops of more than 10% in July compared to last year, while LAX and Burbank reported drops in the 1% to 2% range.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, on the air cargo front, the results were more positive: overall air cargo tonnage at the four airports was up 4.1% in July compared to the same month last year.<\/p>\n
Drops at Burbank, Long Beach<\/p>\n
Hollywood Burbank and Long Beach airports continue to be hit hard by the turbulent market conditions for air travel. Long Beach had the biggest drop of 11.4%, with Hollywood Burbank just behind at 10.1%.<\/p>\n
For both airports, the reasons behind the drops remain the same as in previous months.<\/p>\n
At Long Beach, Southwest Airlines Co. is by far the dominant player with more than 85% of total passengers and flights. The Dallas-based carrier has cut routes across the country.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also recovering from controversial moves it made last year to end its two free checked bags and open seating policies, two of the factors that had led to its loyal following. Despite all this, the airline last month did launch two new routes from Long Beach to both Portland and Seattle.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Seattle-based Alaska Airlines Inc. has resumed service at Long Beach as of this month; its first route is to Seattle.<\/p>\n
Hollywood Burbank\u2019s passenger counts have been impacted by the restructuring of two carriers that began last year.<\/p>\n
In the runup to its complete shutdown on May 2, Dania Beach, Florida-based Spirit Airlines Inc., had sold hundreds of planes and cut scores of routes across the country, including at Hollywood Burbank. And Houston-based Avelo Airlines Inc.\u00a0 announced last year it was closing its West Coast hub at Burbank, exiting the airport entirely.<\/p>\n
The combination of these restructurings cost the airport tens of thousands of passengers each month.<\/p>\n
The picture should brighten a bit for the Burbank airport later this year as five airlines \u2013 Alaska, Southwest, Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air, Cottonwood, Utah-based Breeze Airways, and New York-based JetBlue Airways previously announced a total of 11 added flight routes. Some of the additional flights have already begun, including Allegiant flights to Bellingham, Washington and Provo Utah and seasonal Alaska Airlines service to Honolulu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n
LAX, Ontario see dip<\/p>\n
At LAX, drops in passenger tallies have been the norm for the past 18 months. But in the last couple of months, the rate of decline has eased \u2013 in part because of the sharper drops last year. June saw a 1.4% drop in passengers, while a 1.6% decline was posted in July.<\/p>\n
Last summer, the airport saw passenger counts plummet up to 7% compared with the same months in 2024.<\/p>\n
As has been the case for much of this year, the July drop was steeper on the international side, down 3% compared with just under 1% for domestic passengers.<\/p>\n
The decline in international passengers came despite two elimination-rounds for the FIFA World Cup in July. Last month, Adam Burke, chief executive of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, told the Business Journal that a convergence of factors led to the disappointing numbers of global travelers to the matches. He cited the dispersed nature of this year\u2019s World Cup and unpredictability in which teams would be playing matches in which cities around the nation as two of the chief culprits.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of fans didn\u2019t know where their teams would be playing far enough in advance to book flights,\u201d Burke said. \u201cThis was especially true for the later rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ontario International saw the smallest drop in passengers in July among the four airports compared to the same month last year \u2013 only 1.2%.<\/p>\n
\u201cOntario International continues to demonstrate the strength and resilience of our airport and the market we serve,\u201d Atif Elkadi, chief executive officer of the Ontario International Airport Authority, said in the airport\u2019s announcement of the July statistics.<\/p>\n
This somewhat sluggish performance for Ontario International stands in stark contrast to the airport\u2019s recent record of 54 consecutive months of year-over-year passenger growth that was snapped in September of last year.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Ontario was the only one of the four local airports to have more passengers going through its gates in July than in the same month in pre-pandemic 2019 \u2013 a whopping 36% more.<\/p>\n
Air Cargo on the rise<\/p>\n
July\u2019s 4.1% rise in air cargo tonnage at the four airports serving Los Angeles County follows a first-half 2026 gain of nearly 6%.<\/p>\n
LAX and Ontario International accounted for roughly 98% of the nearly 287,000 tons of air cargo at the four airports.<\/p>\n
Air cargo tonnage at LAX was up 4.3% in July compared with the same month last year, while Ontario was up 3.6%.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Ontario\u2019s increasing tonnage numbers earlier this year, Elkadi said, \u201cOur strategic location in the Inland Empire, a strong regional economy, modern facilities and exceptional customer service are the reason Ontario is a top 10 destination for our shipping partners.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Passenger traffic declined at all four local airports in July for the second straight month as higher fuel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1473,1474,131,1475,133,132,1476,1477],"class_list":["post-470687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-hollywood-burbank-airport","tag-lax","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-airport","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-international-airport","tag-ontario-international-airport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}