The San Antonio International Airport (SAT) marked a record in passenger counts in 2023 with 10,676,570 people traveling through last year.
Never mind that the number to beat happened four years ago.
Airport officials are moving with confidence and at jet speed to expand the number of gates and flights at the airport while also making improvements at Stinson Municipal Airport, which serves to relieve congestion at SAT.
In 2019, officials celebrated when the number of passengers traveling through SAT hit a record-breaking 10,363,040. It was expected to keep climbing until the COVID pandemic brought air travel to a screeching halt in 2020.
The slump makes this year’s recovery in the travel industry, and San Antonio’s 3% jump in air travel passengers over 2019, perhaps even more impactful. The 2023 number also beats 2022 by 13%.
“We are on cloud nine,” stated Jesus Saenz, the city’s director of airports. “We know how much hard work went into it all — with new routes announced domestically and internationally. 2023 is now the year to beat.”
The holiday travel season helped to propel December 2023 to becoming the busiest for that month in SAT’s history, according to a statement from the airport. With 968,469 air travelers counted last month, it also was the first time passenger numbers exceeded 900,000 for December.
Passenger records were broken every month last year since May, with July marking the first month in SAT history with 1 million passengers traveling.
The increase in passengers also is attributed to new routes and expanded air service introduced in 2023:
- Spirit Airlines added new nonstop flights to Baltimore, Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles.
- Viva Aerobus introduced a new destination: Queretaro, Mexico.
- Delta Air Lines resumed daily service to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
- Southwest Airlines restored its daily service to Kansas City.
“[This year] is full of new previously announced routes that are adding to our continual growth,” said Brian Pratte, chief air service officer of the San Antonio Airport System.
The most celebrated of those is the airport’s first direct flight to Europe. Condor Airlines announced in September that it planned to launch on nonstop service three days a week to Frankfurt beginning May 17.
Ground loading
In February, San Antonio officials will get a closer look at the airport’s planned ground load facility when design details are reviewed by a city panel.
Drawings, a site plan and material specifications submitted to the Office of Historic Preservation by the architecture firm Page show the facility that’s now under construction at the San Antonio International Airport.
Those details, which include fencing and landscaping, are scheduled for consideration by the Historic and Design Review Commission on Feb. 7.
A ground load facility in San Antonio is among the projects included in the 20-year, $2.5 billion airport strategic development plan.
The initial plans and renderings for the facility were released almost a year ago and the airport broke ground on the project in October. It is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2025. A planned new airport terminal is expected to come online in 2028.
A ground load facility is used by low-cost carriers to efficiently move people on and off airplanes with less cost, thus reducing airfares. Ground load facilities are common at smaller airports, but can also be found at larger ones.
In 2022, the Denver International Airport started construction on a ground load facility for Frontier Airlines that is expected to be completed in mid-2024. Denver was expected to mark 80 million passengers for 2023 by the end of December.
Stinson airport
On Thursday, the San Antonio City Council gave the green light to a plan for upgrading the layout of Stinson Municipal Airport.
The last time the plan was updated was in 2012. The process of evaluating and updating the airport layout plan is undertaken about every 10 years. Two of the goals that resulted from this go-round are to add an instrument approach and build new revenue-generating hangars.
With council’s approval, the plan can be submitted to the aviation division of the Texas Department of Transportation for review and adoption.
Stinson averages about 100,000 takeoffs and landings a year. Small private charter flights, helicopter tours, pilot trainees, law enforcement and medical services take off, land, maintain and store their aircraft there.
Planning for the future of the airport, which turns 109 this year, began in 2022 with the help of consultants and public input.
The plan calls for extending the main runway by 1,000 feet, adding an instrument approach to the other end of that runway for use during inclement weather, and making way for multiple new hangars throughout the airport. It also sets a goal to relocate a taxiway that parallels the main taxiway and is too close to the runway centerline.
The estimated cost of those plans is $100 million, with projects requiring approval during the city’s budgeting process. Revenue from ground space leases and developer-built hangars could offset the cost.
