Airport traffic points to busier season

FORT MYERS — Forecasts of a busier winter tourism season are starting to show up in passenger numbers at Southwest Florida International Airport.

Nearly 670,000 passengers passed through the Fort Myers airport in November, a 4.8% increase over the same month one year ago. Year-to-date, passenger traffic is up 4.4% compared with the same 11 months in 2013.

The growth in passenger numbers comes despite a small 1% increase in the number of takeoffs and landings in November at Southwest Florida International compared with November 2013.

The traffic leader in November was Southwest with 132,394 passengers traveling to and from Fort Myers. Rounding out the top five airlines were Delta (124,230), JetBlue (79,557), US Airways (69,214) and Spirit (68,717). Southwest Florida International saw more than 7.6 million passengers in 2013 and is one of the top 50 U.S. airports for passenger traffic.