Passenger traffic at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport reached 75% of its 2019 level in July as volumes continued to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 472,000 passengers flew in and out of the airport during the month, a 14% increase from June, the strongest month-over-month increase in traffic since a nearly 85% jump from February to March earlier this year.
It remains to be seen how the rise of the COVID-19 Delta variant will alter travel for August, but July marked a move closer to pre-pandemic levels. In July 2019, more than 625,000 passengers came through the airport, so Mitchell still has more than 150,000 monthly passengers to recover.
Total airplane operations reached 8,402 for the month, including 4,514 for large carriers. The total represents nearly 89% of July 2019 levels for total operations and more than 82% of July 2019 for large carrier operations.
Among airlines, Southwest continues to lead in market share at Mitchell at roughly 40.2%, down almost 2.7 percentage points from June.
Delta was second in market share for the month at 23.4%, up nearly a point from June. American was third at 15.6%, down 1.4 percentage points from June.
The biggest gainer for the month was Spirit Airlines, which started service from Mitchell earlier this year. In June, Spirit had 1.7% market share, a figure that climbed to 5.3% in July.
