SAN JOSE — All three of the Bay Area’s airports remain stuck well below their pre-coronavirus heights — but the airports in San Jose and Oakland lag far behind the pace of San Francisco airport’s post-COVID rebound.
Adding to the disquieting trends, the passenger trends in 2024 for both San Jose International Airport in the South Bay and San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport in the East Bay are trailing the results for 2023, according to this news organization’s analysis of monthly reports issued by the aviation hubs.
Oakland International Airport, September 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
In contrast to its two smaller Bay Area rivals, San Francisco Airport — locked in a legal war with Oakland Airport — is trending higher in 2024 compared with 2023.
Here are the current trends for the number of passengers handled at the three Bay Area major airports through September, the month with the most recent statistics for the aviation hubs:
— San Jose Airport for the first nine months of 2024 averaged 981,000 passenger trips a month, down 2.6% from the monthly average of 1.01 million passengers in 2023.
— Oakland Airport in 2024 has averaged 920,000 passenger trips a month, down 1.7% from the 937,000 passenger trips a month in 2023.
— San Francisco Airport over the first nine months of 2024 averaged 4.31 million passengers, up 3.1% from a monthly average of 4.18 million passenger trips in 2023.
San Jose International Airport passenger trips zoomed higher during the summer but began to fade after the vacation travel season concluded.
Yet while San Francisco Airport is displaying greater recent strength in activity, passenger trips through all three airports remain a great distance from the altitudes at which they were cruising just before the onset of the coronavirus-linked business shutdowns in March 2020.
San Jose International Airport has suffered through the slowest convalescence from its COVID-linked maladies.
During the 12 months that ended in September, San Jose Airport accommodated 11.83 million passengers, down 24.4% from 2019, when the South Bay aviation hub handled a record-high 15.65 million passengers. That was the final full year before the start of the COVID shutdowns.
Over the one year ending in September, San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport handled 11.13 million passengers, down 16.8% from 2019, when the East Bay travel complex handled 13.38 million passengers.
San Francisco Airport during the 12 months ending in September accommodated 51.14 million passengers, which was down 11.1% from the 57.49 million passengers SFO handled in 2019.
The increased use of remote technologies for handling meetings has dampened interest in travel to numerous business-oriented destinations, which is the case with San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.
That dynamic, in turn, has stymied travel through the primary airports that handle business trips in the Bay Area.