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OIA report increase in air travelers
Greater Orlando Aviation Authority CEO Phil Brown says last weekend, which was not a holiday weekend, more than 60,000 people a day went through their Transportation Security Administration checkpoints.
ORLANDO, Fla. - The Orlando International Airport (OIA) is seeing signs of a recovery.
Greater Orlando Aviation Authority CEO Phil Brown says last weekend, which was not a holiday weekend, more than 60,000 people a day went through their Transportation Security Administration checkpoints.
After a rough 15 months, Brown has been encouraged by the steady incline in the numbers he’s been seeing lately. Brown says other airports are also seeing their number of travelers go up. At OIA, Brown says April is when things really started improving.
"When you compare this April to last April we had a 1700 percent increase. But when you look at 2019 we’re at about 76 percent of where we were compared to the 2019 so we’re making progress," Brown. "I took a look at the numbers this morning for the first two months of May, excuse me first two weeks of May and we’re about 80 percent of where we were. So you can see we’re starting to come back."
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Brown says the majority of passengers right now domestic folks are traveling for pleasure and there hasn’t been much international travel.
Typically, the British and Brazilians make up the largest majority of foreign travelers visiting Orlando according to Brown. The European Union voted Wednesday to start loosening restrictions so he expects to start seeing more tourists and flights from the UK by summer.
Brown expects it to take a bit longer before the airport starts seeing large numbers of Brazilian travelers coming to Orlando.
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