Passenger traffic at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport was 413,511 in June, the first time the airport has exceeded 400,000 monthly passengers since February 2020.
The monthly total was a 12.7% increase from May, nearly doubling the percentage increase from the previous month as the airport continues to see traffic return. It was the best improvement since a nearly 85% increase in traffic from February to March.
Still, Mitchell has a long way to go before traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels. In June 2019, nearly 606,000 passengers came through the airport, leaving the airport at around 68% of its 2019 level. But it is a dramatic improvement from the 133,718 passengers who traveled through the airport in June 2020.
Much of the increase from May to June came from Delta and American. The former saw its passenger total at Mitchell increase 20,393 to nearly 93,000 while the latter increased its passenger total at the airport 15,237 to more than 70,000.
Spirit Airlines, which started service from Milwaukee in June, was the next biggest gainer with nearly 7,000 passengers. United added around 5,200 passengers to reach almost 35,500 and Alaska Airlines added more than 3,500 passengers to reach nearly 9,600.
Frontier Airlines saw the largest drop in passengers at Mitchell with its total decreasing more than 4,700 to 20,378.
Southwest Airlines, which dominates the market at Mitchell, saw its passenger total increase just 118 to 177,266. Southwest’s market share at the airport dropped from 48,3% to 42.9% as a result.
Delta gained more than 2.7 percentage points in share at Mitchell, American added nearly 2 points and Spirit established a 1.7% market share for the month. Frontier lost 1.9 percentage points in market share at Mitchell.
