How the Phoenix airport smashed 3 records in 2023, and what summer travelers should know
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Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport had a record-setting first quarter of 2023 as a combination of snowbirds, spring breakers and a dazzling slate of concerts and sporting events brought more passengers to the airport than in any quarter in its history.
Sky Harbor Airport set these records in the first quarter of 2023:
Its busiest day ever was Feb. 13, when more than 200,000 passengers flew after Super Bowl 57 and the WM Phoenix Open golf tournament ended. The previous high was 175,000 passengers on Feb. 2, 2015, the day after the last Super Bowl in Arizona.
It set a record for its busiest month ever in March, with 4,615,127 passengers. That beat its previous busiest month, March 2019, by almost 2%.
And Sky Harbor had more passengers in the first quarter of this year than in its previous record quarter of January-March 2019. A total of 12,283,577 passengers flew from January to March 2023, up about 4% from 2019. Sky Harbor surpassed its 2019 traffic in all three months of the quarter.
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Why Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport was so busy in early 2023
January to March is typically the busiest time of year for Sky Harbor because of snowbirds and spring breakers who come to escape the winter weather.
People traveling for sports and concerts also contributed to the heavy traffic during the quarter.
In addition to the Super Bowl and Phoenix Open, the first quarter of 2023 saw MLB spring training, the Innings Festival at Tempe Beach Park with headliners Green Day and Eddie Vedder and the two sold-out opening dates of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour at State Farm Stadium in Glendale.
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It also helped that airlines introduced several new routes during the quarter, including service to Monterrey, Mexico, via American Airlines. Sky Harbor's total number of nonstop destinations is now 140, the most ever, Sky Harbor spokesman Eric Everts said.
Sky Harbor's ongoing efforts to improve the customer experience driving the growth as well, Everts said.
"Completing recent projects such as the PHX Sky Train extension to the Rental Car Center and beginning others, such as constructing a new taxiway, make for an improved overall experience which encourages new and old visitors alike to travel through PHX," he said in an email.
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What does the summer look like at Sky Harbor?
Typically, the spring and summer months are busy — last year ranged from 3.4 million to 3.9 million passengers per month at Sky Harbor — but not as bustling as January to March.
But Sky Harbor's current success may be an indicator for how the rest of the year might look, pending no significant disruptions. If passenger traffic patterns continue to match or beat prepandemic levels for the rest of the year, 2023 is on track to be Sky Harbor's best year since 2019. That was the airport's biggest year ever, with 46.2 million passengers, according to economic development statistics on the airport's website.
Increasing population growth in metro Phoenix, favorable economic conditions and Arizona's strong appeal as a destination all contributed to a record year of airport traffic in 2019, Everts said.
That appeal continues to build as airlines add routes at Sky Harbor. New routes expected in the coming months include Frontier Airlines service to Tampa and Houston and Allegiant Air flights to Asheville, North Carolina.
"Sky Harbor expects to continue the busy first quarter into the summer and beyond," Everts said. "We’ve already seen multiple records broken this year including the busiest day and now the busiest month ever. The release of the March statistics show that travel has continued to be an area of high demand and even record-breaking here in Phoenix."
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Reach the reporter at Michael.Salerno@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salerno_phx.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How the Phoenix airport smashed 3 travel records in 2023 already
