MIA Serves Record Number of Passengers in 2022

MIAMI, Fla. -- Miami International Airport has served more passengers than ever in 2022.

Some 49.5 million passengers have traveled through the airport as of Dec. 22, reports show.

That figure, expected to increase to slightly more than 50 million at year's end, exceeds a record-holding pre-pandemic 2019, when 45.9 million passengers traveled through MIA. It also marks a whopping 76 percent surge over passenger traffic for the year ending Dec. 31, 2021, the reports note.

MIA is the leading economic engine for Miami-Dade County and the state of Florida, generating some $32 billion in annual revenue. The facility's recovery has occurred faster than the Airports Council International (ACI) World's anticipated that North American airports would.

The ACI provides a view of air transport demand at the world's airports. The agency in June announced that it expected airports in North America to reach 89 percent of 2019 levels by year's end and secure a full recovery by 2023.

The ACI credited a historic vaccination effort with helping airport traffic as a whole return to normal.

MIA also has a competitive dominant carrier in American Airlines and a healthy Latin America-Caribbean region market on its side.

With carriers Spirit, Southwest and Jet Blue added since 2019, the Latin America-Caribbean market and the vaccination effort have helped the airport fast regain post-pandemic business.

It was in December 2019 that the World Health Organization's China office received reports of pneumonia symptoms that standard treatments did not alleviate.

As the pandemic swiftly spread, the travel industry endured travel screenings, travel quarantines, advisories to avoid non-essential travel and travel bans.

The number of people traveling through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, typically near or more than 2 million monthly, by June 2020 declined to around one-half million and then by the week of Apr. 12, 2020 plunged to a low of around 87,000, TSA information shows.


International travel plummeted by 74 percent, representing an estimated export revenue loss of $1.3 trillion as compared with 2019, the agency reports.

By July 1, 2020, American Airlines resumed full flight schedules.

It wasn't until Aug 23, 2021, however, that the FDA approved the first COVID-19 vaccine.

Many Latin Americans traveled to the US for inoculations.

The ACI by late 2021 reported a surge in Latin America-Caribbean markets. Passenger traffic numbers at MIA nevertheless concluded the year at around 37 million.

The Latin America-Caribbean region market then enjoyed the strongest first half of 2022 among regions, the ACI reported.

North America, responsible for the largest jump in MIA's 2022 passenger traffic, was second.

By the time summer travel this year experienced what the ACI reported as a surge, MIA had attracted low-cost carriers Spirit Airlines, JetBlue and Southwest.

Some 70,000 flights were added to nearly 275,000 that the airport offered in 2019, helping to spur post- pandemic passenger growth, Communications Director Greg Chin said.

Even American, which is responsible for slightly more than 61 percent of the airport's market share, is serving 6 percent more passengers at MIA than it did pre-pandemic, Chin noted.

ACI called it the largest seat capacity growth of all large US airlines.

MIA now boasts 134 airlines that travel to and from 70 countries on 1,180 routes.

Airport officials in mid-2022 forecast that this would be its busiest year ever.

As of Dec. 22, 2022, the number of MIA's domestic arrivals and departures, 24.6 million, reflected an increase of 6 million more than those in 2019.

MIA is responsible for around 60 percent of the state's international visitors.

The 17.5 million international passengers that the facility welcomed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 22, 2022 marked a 100,000 decline as compared with 2019, the reports note.

It wasn't until early to mid-2022 that countries such as Barbados began lifting restrictions such as those requiring negative Covid-19 test results or documentation of recovery from the pandemic.

Locales such as the Cayman Islands continue to restrict US citizen entry based on criteria such as owning residential property there.

The Asia-Pacific region, by contrast, was severely "dampened" during 2021 by a Covid-19 resurgence and the "re-establishment of travel restrictions in the region," according to the ACI report.

Only some Asia-Pacific countries have reopened even to vaccinated travelers, the ACI pointed out, noting that the region is expected to experience the slowest recovery.

At San Francisco International Airport, where the Asia-Pacific market represents its largest international segment, passenger numbers for the year to date Aug. 2022 were nearly 27 million as compared with 39 million in 2019.

MIA expects its international market share to recover by 2023, Chin noted.

The airport's level of connectivity, measured by the number of destinations that its carriers serve, meanwhile helped airports in the US this year claim nine of the Official Airline Guide's (OAG's) top 10 global airport megahub rankings. In 2019, airports in the US held only three of those positions.

Aviation analytics provider OAG in September announced that MIA rose in the ranks from 20 in 2019 to 10 in 2022.

Nearby Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport ranked ninth on the OAG's list of the top 25 low-cost megahubs for travelers seeking a wide selection of destinations from low-cost carriers, up from 13 in 2019.

Spirit Airlines is Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood's dominant carrier.