The Burlington International Airport is fully back in business, said Nic Longo, deputy director of BTV.
The airport and partnering airlines have reinstated all the flights that flew out of Burlington before the pandemic and Longo said he’s seeing passenger numbers tick back up to pre-Covid-19 levels.
“We were expecting and forecasting that things would pick up after vaccine goals were hit in the state and nationally, but we weren’t expecting it to happen this fast,” said Longo.
Additionally, the airport has either added or is in the process of adding new flights.
A direct route between Burlington and Boston began flying in April; another direct to and from Dallas was added this month; and in November, Vermonters will be able to fly straight from Burlington to Miami and back, which could be an appealing option during Vermont’s cold winter months.
At this point, Longo and other BTV staff are accustomed to quick and drastic changes. Last year in mid-March, passenger numbers plummeted from around 11,000 a week down to 500 after former President Trump declared the first Covid national emergency on March 13, 2020 and lockdowns began. Numbers stayed down for months to follow, VTDigger reported last year.
The number of fliers started increasing in April, presumably due to increased comfort with travel as more people got vaccinated and pandemic restrictions waned.
BTV is now seeing about 10,000 outbound travelers per week, according to Longo. That represents 65% of 2019 numbers for the same time period, when between 15,000 and 17,000 people were boarding flights out of Burlington Airport on a weekly basis.
JetBlue flew to New York only a few times a week during the pandemic, he said, “but now it’s back up to three times a day.”
“Everything is reverting back to where it was,” Longo said.
Even without the pandemic disruption, the number of passengers departing BTV has oscillated over the years.
As Seven Days reported back in 2018, the airport struggled with low boarding numbers for most of the 2010s, which officials attributed to “a sluggish economy [and] weak Canadian dollar.” That year the airport started seeing significant growth with bigger aircraft, rather than small regional planes, and competition between air carriers increased, lowering ticket prices.
Longo is hopeful that the airport will return to 2019 passenger levels.
“We’re coming back,” Longo said. “And we’re coming back very strong.”
