Passenger trips at both San Jose International Airport and Oakland International Airport are off to turbulent starts to kick off 2025, but travel activity at San Francisco International Airport has perked up.
All three of the Bay Area’s primary airports, however, remain stuck at altitudes that are well below the lofty heights to which their passenger traffic had climbed before the coronavirus outbreak.
A jetliner headed to San Jose International Airport is visible behind a scale-model replica of the San Jose Electric Light Tower in the city’s downtown. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
The struggles of the three aviation hubs are a reminder that the coronavirus-spawned business lockdowns unleashed long-term economic consequences.
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The government-mandated lockdowns helped to jolt the worldwide and Bay Area travel industries and weakened many hotel markets, including those in this region.
It’s also clear the Bay Area’s three international airports have yet to fully recover from the nosedive in passenger trips they all suffered starting during the first three months of 2020.
Here are the latest 12-month passenger totals for the three airports and how that activity compares to the trips they handled in 2019, which was the final full year before the onset of the coronavirus and the deadly bug’s accompanying business shutdowns:
— San Jose Airport handled just under 11.7 million passengers during the 12 months that ended in February, according to statistics posted on the airport’s website. That total is 25.3% below the 15.65 million passengers the South Bay aviation hub handled in 2019.
— Oakland Airport accommodated 9.86 million passengers over the 12 months that ended in January. That is 26.3% below the 13.38 million passengers the East Bay air travel complex accommodated in 2019. January 2025 is the most recent month for which Oakland Airport has posted statistics.
— San Francisco Airport handled 52.82 million passengers over the one-year period that ended in February. That was 8.1% below the 57.49 million passengers that SFO handled in 2019.
The most recent results show a current slump at both San Jose and Oakland airports, but San Francisco Airport is zooming higher so far in 2025.
In February, San Jose International Airport handled about 746,200 passengers. That was down 9% compared with February 2024.
Oakland International Airport accommodated 680,700 passengers in January, down 18.9% from the same month the year before.
San Francisco International Airport handled 3.55 million passengers in February, up 3.7% from February 2024.
