Florida Home To The Nation's Fastest Growing Airports

Travel data and insight provider OAG has revealed its North America’s Airport Leaders 2019 at ACI’s 2019 Jumpstart Air Development Conference in Nashville, TN. OAG’s analysis highlights the airports that have grown the most in key performance metrics, including: seat capacity growth (Fastest Growing Airports), scheduled routes (The Trailblazers), number of scheduled international routes (Global Gateways), aircraft turnaround time (Turnaround Kings) and percentage of seats operated by low-cost carriers (Low-Cost Collaborators). Airports were categorized and evaluated by size: Major, Large, Medium and Small.

“The year-over-year growth in North America has been really strong, especially at large airports such as Dallas/Fort Worth and Miami that are now seeing higher domestic and international demand from building services in previously underserved markets,” said John Grant, senior analyst with OAG. “Healthy expansion among medium and small airport categories indicates there’s no limit on opportunity for North American airports when they make informed, data-driven development decisions.”

Fastest Growing Airports
Florida dominates the list of fastest growing airports, which is measured based on departing seat capacity growth. The top three Major airports – Orlando (MCO), Tampa (TPA) and Fort Lauderdale (FLL) - all recorded growth of at least 6.7%. The top Large airport, also in the Sunshine State, is Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) with over 20% growth. The average growth rate is 31% across the Medium group, compared to 11% for Large airports. Every Small airport included in the top 10 more than doubled its capacity in the past year.

Low-Cost Collaborators
Chicago Midway International (MDW) has the largest LCC share (95%) among Major airports, but Orlando International Airport (MCO) grew its LCC share the most over the 12-month period (10%). Houston Hobby Airport (HOU) has the biggest LCC share (95%) of the Large airports, with Edmonton International Airport (YEG) seeing the largest growth rate (17%). Abbotsford International Airport (YXX) and Toronto Hamilton Airport (YHM) stand out in the Medium category with 46% and 66% growth in LCC share, respectively. Every Small airport included in the analysis has 100% of seats operated by LCCs, with Portsmouth Pease International Airport (PSM) expanding its share the most (52%).

Turnaround Kings
Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and New York’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) secured spots in the top five most efficient Major airports. John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) also made the top 10, managing to get its departing flights away on time by 3.6 percentage points higher than arriving flights. Canadian airports dominated in turnaround time overall, with three airports – Montreal (YUL), Toronto (YYZ) and Vancouver (YVR) – landing in the top five for the Major category and improving OTP by nearly 8%, 6% and 5% respectively. Ottawa (YOW) and Edmonton (YEG) secured the top two spots among Large airports. Five of the top 10 Medium and six of the top 10 Small airports were also based in Canada.

The Trailblazers
Analyzing airports that have added the most new routes, Orlando International Airport (MCO) topped the Majors with 22 new routes, followed by Denver International Airport (DEN), with 17 new destinations and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) with 15 new routes. Chicago O’Hare (ORD) serves the most destinations of the top 10 Majors with 240 total routes after adding 15 new routes over the past year. Six of the Trailblazers in the Large category – Raleigh (RDU), Austin (AUS), San Jose (SJC), Nashville (BNA), Sacramento (SMF) and San Antonio (SAT) – are also in the top 10 fastest growing.

The results featured in North America’s Airport Leaders 2019 are sourced from OAG’s databases and covers the 12-month period from June 2018 to May 2019, except for turnaround data which is for the period of May 2018 to April 2019.

(Source: OAG news release)

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