Jun. 23—The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport is on its first non-COVID-19 losing streak in five years.
In May, for the third month in a row, passenger departures dropped compared to the same month the previous year.
That's the first time that happened since 2018 when Allegiant Air pulled out that January.
"This is the ebb and flow of mid-sized airports," airport director Carl Beardsley Jr. said Thursday.
Beardsley and airport marketing and communications director Eric McKitish blamed the declines on American Airlines' ongoing difficulty in finding enough pilots and smaller jets used locally.
Efforts to obtain comment from American were unsuccessful.
Airport departures dropped the first seven months of 2018 before beginning a long rally of breaking monthly records. For all but three of the next 19 months, more people flew out of the airport each month than the same month in all other years. COVID-19 snapped the streak.
Starting in March 2020, departures plummeted monthly for the next year, exacerbated by Delta Air Lines permanent withdrawal. They climbed until the declines began in March. March was down 10.3% from the previous March, April, 14.3%, and May, 12.4%. The airport had 15,022 passenger departures in May, far off the record 27,305 in May 2019.
In the first six months of 2022, American had two flights a day to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, one in the morning and one in either the afternoon or early evening.
That changed dramatically this year.
For all but one day this year, American had no more than one flight a day with all but one of its June flights an evening departure.
Despite the reduced American flights in January and early February, overall departures were up from 2022 in both months.
As American cut its morning flights in January, United Airlines added a morning flight and has kept offering two flights daily but United hasn't picked up all the lost American passengers. American has maintained three flights to Charlotte, North Carolina, its other destination from the local airport, but has switched to smaller jets, which also pushed down departures, McKitish said.
"With the pilot shortage, they're doing what they can," he said. "They're trying to keep the same amount of flights in here. But it's the moving puzzle pieces, not just all over the country but all over the world for them."
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