San Jose Airport passenger trips are far weaker than pre-COVID altitude

SAN JOSE — Passenger trips through San Jose International Airport perked up a bit in May compared with April, but the South Bay travel hub’s activity remains feeble compared to its pre-COVID altitude.

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The San Jose aviation complex handled slightly more than 931,300 passengers in May, which was 4.5% higher than the roughly 891,300 passengers the airport accommodated in April, according to new statistics posted by the travel center.

The May 2025 totals, however, were 9.5% below the number of passengers San Jose Airport handled in May 2024.

The big problem for San Jose International Airport is the travel center’s inability to fully recover from the nosedive it experienced due to the coronavirus outbreak in the early months of 2020.

San Jose Airport’s overall passenger trends remain feeble compared to the lofty levels the airport achieved in 2019, the final full year before the onset of business lockdowns that state and local government agencies imposed to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Over the one-year period that ended in May, San Jose Airport handled 11.47 million passengers, this news organization’s analysis of the airport’s monthly reports shows.

That 11.47 million figure is 26.7% below the 15.65 million passengers the South Bay airport accommodated in 2019. The 2019 full-year trip totals were an all-time high.

The long-term trends are becoming ominous for San Jose Airport.

In 2024, the South Bay aviation complex accommodated 11.77 million passengers, which was 2.7% below the 12.1 million passengers who traveled through the airport in 2023.

The passenger activity in 2024 worked out to about 980,000 passengers a month. The passenger trips for the 12 months ending in May of this year equated to an average of 960,000 passengers a month.

Put another way, passenger trips in 2025 will have to greatly pick up the pace over the final seven months of this year to top the activity for 2024.

So far in 2025, San Jose Airport has yet to handle 1 million or more passengers. The aviation hub’s last million-passenger month was in December 2024.

San Jose Airport, however, has enjoyed increases in passenger trips for three consecutive months.

The post-COVID era of Zoom conference calls could be affecting business travel because more business meetings are being handled remotely rather than through in-person gatherings.

Both Oakland International Airport and San Francisco International Airport remain well below their pre-COVID levels.

The Oakland Airport passenger trips over the 12 months that ended in March were 22.2% below the East Bay airport’s 2019 passenger totals.

San Francisco Airport’s passenger trips during the one-year period ending in April were 7.3% below the 2019 result.