SRQ took hit in Q4, saw 2024 passenger traffic dip

Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport experienced a slight decrease in passenger traffic and enplanements year-over-year in 2024, which airport officials largely anticipated as the result of several factors, including hurricanes.

There were 4.25 million passengers traveling through SRQ in 2024, according to data from the airport. That marked a slight slowdown from 2023, which was a record year for the airport in terms of passenger traffic, with 4.32 million travelers.

SRQ experienced the greatest decline in enplanements in the state in the fourth quarter, with a 16.9% decrease compared with the fourth quarter in 2023, according to a new report from Visit Florida. In the fourth quarter, SRQ was among 10 airports in Florida that experienced declines in enplanements, “likely reflecting the impact of Hurricanes Helene and Milton,” the report says.

SRQ closed the afternoon before Hurricane Milton made landfall Oct. 9. It did not reopen until Oct. 16, once the roof over Concourse B was temporarily replaced, among at least $7 million in hurricane-related repairs.

“We lost 100,000 seats, over 600 flights,” SRQ President and CEO Rick Piccolo said, speaking at a November meeting of the Lambda Alpha International Florida Suncoast chapter. “In October, our traffic was down 42% due to the hurricanes.”

Another factor that Piccolo said “cost us some traffic” in 2024 was the CrowdStrike IT outage in July, when a software defect crashed Windows systems nationwide, causing cancellations and delays across the aviation industry. 

Overall, traffic in 2024 was down 1.77% year-over-year, which “shows you just how fast we were growing until all those impacts,” Piccolo said.

Overall, SRQ saw a nearly 1.5% decline in enplanements in 2024 compared with 2023, according to Visit Florida, which said there were 2.13 million enplanements last year versus 2.16 million the year before.

While Piccolo said he expected to see “some softening” from November to January, in part because of the impacts of Hurricane Milton, he expected traffic to pick up again in 2025. In December, the latest data for which SRQ passenger information is available, passenger traffic was down about 0.25%, from 406,113 in 2023 to 405,115 in 2024.

“By February, our seats go up,” Piccolo said, “so we'll be back growing and rebounding pretty quickly now.” Last February, he noted, was a record for passenger traffic. In February 2024, SRQ saw 430,348 passengers traveling through the airport.

Passenger traffic is also expected to increase due to the addition of Concourse A, which opened at SRQ with five new gates on Jan. 15 and is projected to serve 1 million passengers this year.