Ian's impact: Passenger numbers in October lowest in two years at SWFL International

Monday marked two months since Hurricane Ian slammed Southwest Florida and with it came another reminder of the storm's huge and wide-spread impact on the region.

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The Lee County Port Authority released the passenger statistics at Southwest Florida International Airport for October. Not surprisingly, the numbers were significantly lower compared to October of 2021.

There was a total of 432,667 passengers who traveled through Southwest Florida International Airport in October, a year-over-year decrease of 44 percent.

On the bright side and thanks to some record passenger numbers earlier this year,  year-to-date passenger traffic is still up 5 percent compared to 2021.

You'd have to go back to Oct. 2020 (417,305  passengers) — the year when the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. — to find a month with fewer passengers than this  October.

RSW was closed to everything except military and humanitarian flights from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4. Ian made landfall the afternoon of Sept. 28 as a Category 4 storm.

From Oct. 5 to Oct. 10, commercial flights operated during daylight hours (due to airline and federal agency staffing) and then on Oct. 11 full operations resumed.

The commercial airline traffic leader in October was Delta with 100,178 total passengers. Rounding out the top five airlines were American (78,911), United (72,677), JetBlue (62,840) and Southwest (39,043).

Southwest Florida International Airport served more than 10.3 million passengers in 2021. So far this year there have been 8,669,059 passengers, including the single-month record of 1,514,046 in March.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Hurricane Ian: Fort Myers airport closing leads to low passenger count