Southwest Florida International Airport scored record growth in the first quarter of 2018, including a 10.2 percent year-over-year increase in passengers for March.
In March alone, the airport served 1,379,728 fliers “despite numerous flight cancellations … due to weather conditions in other parts of the United States,” said Jeff Mulder, Lee County Port Authority executive director.
March historically is the airport's busiest month. But this March now stands as the single-busiest month at the south Fort Myers airport, which will mark its 35th birthday in May.
Lee County Port Authority also reported:
•Year-to-date, passenger traffic was up 10 percent from the same period last year.
•Southwest Airlines was the busiest carrier in March, with 297,668 passengers, followed by Delta Air Lines (268,505), American (168,995), Spirit (166,602) and JetBlue (136,670).
•Southwest Florida International Airport had 10,907 takeoffs and landings, an increase of 3.5 percent compared to March 2017.
•The international airport handled nearly 3 million pounds of air freight in March, down about a half percent from March last year.
The airport's low-cost carriers led the passenger surge.
Frontier alone had nearly 71,000 more local passengers this March, for a 126 percent increase. It went from serving six to 20 cities out of Southwest Florida International.
Spirit carried about 35,000 more fliers for a 26.1 percent increase.
The legacy carriers, however, also chipped in, most notably American and Delta – with 11.4 percent and 8.6 percent more passengers, respectively.
The biggest downer in the port authority report: Page Field, Lee County's general aviation airport, sustained a 20.5 percent year-over-year decline in takeoffs and landings in March.
That's one temporary consequence of a planned rehabilitation of the two runways there, said Victoria Moreland, port authority spokeswoman.
"The (shorter) crosswind runway is still closed, and we've had a lot of crosswinds," Moreland said.
That has prompted some of the smaller private aircraft to stay away.
Moreland expects takeoffs and landings will return to season-appropriate frequency when the runway work is completed, by early to mid-summer.