SAN JOSE — San Jose International Airport soared to a milestone for the coronavirus era: The Silicon Valley aviation hub handled at least one million passengers in a single month since the outbreak of the deadly bug.
Slightly more than 1 million passengers flew through San Jose airport in May, city aviation officials said.
“Crossing the one million mark, though still short of the record numbers we saw just prior to the pandemic, puts San Jose International Airport back in the range of monthly activity that we saw as recently as 2018,” said John Aitken, the city’s director of aviation.
The 1,009,023 passengers that flew through San Jose airport in May were nearly double the 589,600 passengers who used the airport in May 2021, according to the Silicon Valley aviation hub.
However, the current number remains far below the average monthly passenger totals for the period that preceded the outbreak of the coronavirus and the government-ordered business lockdowns that began in March 2022.
Over the one-year period that ended in February 2020 — the final month before the onset of mandated shutdowns to combat the deadly bug — San Jose airport averaged 1.32 million passengers a month.
The May total of slightly more than 1 million passengers was 23.4% below that average monthly from prior to the coronavirus outbreak, this news organization’s analysis of airport statistics shows.
Nevertheless, the airport is clearly on an upward trajectory for its passenger activity, in the view of airport officials.
Over the first five months of 2022, San Jose airport averaged about 796,000 passengers a month, which was 116% higher, or more than double, the average of 368,100 passengers a month for the same five-month period in 2021, the analysis of the airport stats determined.
“After nearly two years of watching our airport terminals slowly get busier and busier, May’s traffic numbers certainly feel like a milestone to celebrate,” Aitken said.
