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School’s out for summer, and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is busier than it’s ever been.
The airport had near-record traffic on Friday, with 68,182 outbound travelers — just short of the 72,154-passenger record set in August 2019. Sea-Tac had been bracing for record traffic volumes.
But that’s just the start. Traffic is expected to set records several times throughout the summer travel season.
“We’ll see that level of traffic really from now until the end of August,” said airport spokesperson Perry Cooper, adding that the busiest day of the year is expected to fall around mid-August.
“Part of what all of us are learning in the industry is what are those patterns going to look like post-pandemic.”
The airport expects sustained high traffic throughout the summer that will reach pre-pandemic levels. But while the highs are getting higher, off-season lows have been lower, with the result that the airport doesn’t expect to surpass its full-year 2019 traffic until next year.
For Sea-Tac, that means “this could be a very, very difficult summer,” said Steven Danishek, president of travel agency TMA Travel.
While many of the staffing challenges that characterized the previous summer and winter travel seasons have eased, delays in new aircraft deliveries, along with a scarcity of parts for regular maintenance have left airlines with little slack in the system. Any weather-related delays, like the summer storms that are expected in the Southern states, could easily send schedules awry.
“We haven’t learned much and the airlines haven’t been able to make many changes” from similar challenges last year, Danishek said. “If a flight is canceled there are no empty seats to take people.”
In all, the airport estimated 196,000 passengers would travel through the airport Friday as Seattle’s tourism season kicks off. Cirium data shows the top five destinations from Sea-Tac on airlines’ schedules this week were Anchorage, Alaska; Los Angeles; Denver; Las Vegas; and Phoenix.
Cooper said Sea-Tac’s operations are starting to look more like that of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, as many of the hour-to-hour peaks and valleys have begun to disappear. In their place is an uninterrupted flow of passengers, creating staffing challenges for the airport, the Transportation Security Administration and dining and retail vendors.
The new passenger records aren’t taking the airport by surprise, though, Cooper added. Sea-Tac has been adding staff since Memorial Day in preparation for the coming rush, growing its ranks to around 2,221 direct employees.
Editor’s note: The story has been updated to provide Friday’s outbound passenger total at Sea-Tac Airport.