New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport said last weekend's passenger traffic rose to the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic, an indication that tourism is starting to rebound as coronavirus vaccinations increase and more people feel comfortable flying again.
On Thursday, Kevin Dolliole, the airport's head of aviation, told the aviation board that he expects business to continue to improve in the months ahead after traffic on Sunday rose to 12,000 passengers, the highest single-day number since last March. At its worst in April of last year, fewer than 500 passengers a day went through the airport.
While he cautioned that it might take years to get back to pre-pandemic travel levels, the weekend data offered a hopeful sign that business would start improving for New Orleans' important hospitality industry.
"We hope to see another significant boost in passenger activity by late summer as the vaccine becomes more widely distributed," Dolliole told the monthly meeting of the airport's oversight board. "But industry experts still say we may not see pre-COVID traffic again until 2024."
The boost came on the weekend of spring break for many schools and reflected an uptick in travel nationally. The Transportation Security Administration last week reported that their officers screened almost 1.4 million passengers on Friday, March 12, the highest level nationally since the start of the pandemic. The traffic total was up 20% compared to the same day last year, though it was still 38% lower than a comparable March weekend in 2019.
In recent months, passenger traffic at New Orleans airport has been slowly creeping higher. And now, some flights that are critical to the airport's long-term plans to offer more domestic and international connections are also arriving.
American Airlines said earlier this month that it will be adding a new, non-stop service from New Orleans to Austin, Texas.
And on Thursday, Southwest Airlines confirmed that it expects to resume its non-stop flight to Cancun on April 17, the first international flight from the airport in more than a year.
Among the larger carriers operating from the airport, Southwest, which accounts for just over a third of traffic from Louis Armstrong, had about 108,000 passengers coming and going from New Orleans in January.
That's down more than 70% from January last year. But Southwest spokesperson Brian Parrish said that the federal relief funding that airlines have received over the past year has meant that all 235 of the airline's employees in New Orleans have kept their jobs.
Southwest rescinded its Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice of possible job losses at the start of the year.
"When the COVID-19 economic relief package —which included an extension of the Payroll Support Program—was signed into law in late December 2020, Southwest Airlines rescinded all WARN notices," Parish said.
" Southwest does not currently anticipate the need to conduct any furloughs or pay cuts in 2021, including at MSY," he said, referring to the industry's abbreviation for New Orleans' airport.
Drake Castaneda, a spokesman for Delta Airlines, the second-largest operator at New Orleans airport with 17% of flights, also said the airline does not expect any staff cuts in New Orleans.
Like other airlines, Delta reduced its global headcount by more than 20,000 through voluntary early retirement and 40,000 employees took unpaid leave during the pandemic, while ground staff saw hours cut by 25%.
Delta's CEO Ed Bastian said at an industry conference earlier this week that the company is losing about $12 million to $14 million a day, though that represents an improvement from the $100 million a day loss at the worst point last year. He expects the airline to be profitable again by the third quarter.
Despite the resumption of Southwest's Cancun flights, it is not yet clear when the other nine carriers with international flights from New Orleans will resume service. British Airways had been taking bookings to resume flights from London to New Orleans in early March, but tight international travel restrictions between the two countries meant those flights had to be postponed.
And overall traffic remains far below its peak. The latest official monthly numbers available on New Orleans passenger traffic, from January, showed that passengers enplaning and deplaning totaled 326,000, down 70% from the same month a year ago.
Still, after a dismal year, the steady improvement in visitors to the airport has offered some hope, particularly for concessionaires and others that rely on passenger traffic.
Mark Heintzman of Delaware North, which operates about two dozen food concessions, said that Leah's Kitchen, Ye Olde College Inn, Folse Market and City Greens are all expected to start operating again with the next few weeks.
The airport currently has 27 of its total 46 food and non-food concessions open, compared to just 13 last spring. Average daily sales were down 52% in February from November 2019, when the new terminal opened.
This story has been updated from an earlier version to correct from the source the date that Southwest Airlines restarts its Cancun flights.
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