Vancouver International Airport's passenger volumes up to 80% normal

Passenger volumes at Vancouver International Airport recover to 80% normal

The atrium area of the Pier D expansion of Vancouver International Airport, featuring the enclosed outdoor space, seating areas, and future retail and dining units. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Vancouver International Airport’s (YVR) passenger volumes have continued to recover closer to pre-pandemic 2019 volumes, based on the latest released statistics.

Roughly two million passengers were recorded at YVR for each of the past two months, specifically 1.91 million for June 2022 and 2.06 million for July 2022.

This represents a recovery rate of 80% for June 2022 and 79% for July 2022 over the same months in 2019.

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These figures are up from May 2022’s volume of 1.611 million or a recovery rate of 73% over 2019.

Detailed statistics breaking down YVR’s July 2022’s figures are not available at this time, but newly released data on June 2022 shows the following:

Total Domestic:
- June 2019: 1,126,382
- January 2022: 462,723
- February 2022: 488,348
- March 2022: 680,174
- April 2022: 776,205
- May 2022: 964,371
- June 2022: 1,068,893 (95% normal)
Total International (including US Transborder):
- June 2019: 1,262,642
- January 2022: 313,322
- February 2022: 321,780
- March 2022: 525,557
- April 2022: 601,058
- May 2022: 647,413
- June 2022: 837,717 (66% normal)
International — US Transborder:
- June 2019: 586,535
- January 2022: 131,707
- February 2022: 150,857
- March 2022: 277,581
- April 2022: 310,852
- May 2022: 333,697
- June 2022: 433,524 (74% normal)
International — Asia Pacific:
- June 2019: 400,934
- January 2022: 76,824
- February 2022: 69,104
- March 2022: 92,570
- April 2022: 108,071
- May 2022: 147,088
- June 2022: 163,934 (41% normal)
International — Europe:
- June 2019: 230,183
- January 2022: 49,789
- February 2022: 41,452
- March 2022: 65,837
- April 2022: 92,264
- May 2022: 119,337
- June 2022: 195,827 (85% normal)
International — Miscellaneous (scheduled/charter):
- June 2019: 44,990
- January 2022: 55,002
- February 2022: 60,367
- March 2022: 86,569
- April 2022: 89,871
- May 2022: 47,291
- June 2022: 44,432 (99% normal)

As can be expected, the recovery in domestic volumes in June 2022 essentially surged to normal volumes.

Overall international volumes, including US Transborder, are two-thirds back to pre-pandemic 2019’s volumes, with the European market now leading recovery (85%) after experiencing a substantial month-over-month growth compared to May 2022. This is followed by US Transborder at 74%.

The Asia Pacific market continues to experience a weaker pace of recovery (41%) due to ongoing strict quarantine measures for YVR’s historically large international markets of Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Japan.

Over the first seven months of 2022, YVR has seen a total of 9.77 million passengers — 776,045 in January; 810,128 in February; 1,205,731 in March; 1,377,263 in April; 1,611,784 in May; and 2,060,126 in June. In contrast, YVR saw just 1.33 million passengers over the same period in 2021, and ended last year’s entire 12-month period with 7.09 million passengers.

With the latest figures for June and July 2022, and the preliminary numbers for the first week of August 2022, if the recovery trend holds, YVR could be on track to end 2022 with a total of about 20 million passengers — roughly equivalent to the historical volumes of 2014 or 2015, but still well behind the historic record of 26.4 million in 2019.

Over the first week of August 2022, YVR estimated it saw about 470,000 passengers, including high volumes of 68,516 on August 4 and 69,800 on August 7. The average over the past week was 67,000 passengers daily — approaching the average of 81,270 passengers daily over the same first week of August 2019.

August 2022 is traditionally a busy period for travel at YVR, with summer vacation season ramping up, and students returning to BC for their studies.

With surging passenger volumes and ongoing labour shortages throughout the aviation industry, YVR is urging travellers to continue arriving early — two hours for domestic flights, and three hours for international flights.

According to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, 81.5% of travellers at YVR in July 2022 were screened within 15 minutes through the airport’s security screening checkpoints.

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