YVR Airport passenger numbers in September reached 355,000: statistics

YVR TAKEcare. (Vancouver International Airport)

Nearly 59,000 fewer passengers passed through Vancouver International Airport (YVR) in September 2020, marking the first time passenger volumes saw a negative rate of growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Newly released statistics show the month saw 355,414 total passengers — down by about 14% compared to the previous month’s total of 414,094, and 84.6% from September 2019’s total of 2.3 million.

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In July and August 2020, repatriation trips and the outbound movements of domestic and international students returning home contributed to the stronger passenger volume performances for those months. As summer came towards an end, the heightened volume of trips generated for these purposes likely weakened in September 2020. Even during normalcy, there is usually a dip for most of September after the busier weeks leading up to Labour Day weekend.

YVR saw consecutive incremental month-over-month passenger growth since April 2020, the low of the pandemic when just 68,730 passengers were recorded.

Domestic travel continues to see the greatest sustained rebound, accounting for the vast majority of passenger activity.

Here is the full breakdown of YVR’s passenger traffic for September 2020:

Domestic:
- 2019: 1,136,494
- 2020: 287,531 (-74.7%)
US transborder:
- 2019: 529,152
- 2020: 20,776 (-96.1%)
Asia Pacific:
- 2019: 374,264
- 2020: 32,909 (-91.2%)
Europe:
- 2019: 221,492
- 2020: 12,313 (-94.4%)
Miscellaneous:
- 2019: 41,994
- 2020: 1,885 (-95.5%)
Month total for June 2020:
- 2019: 2,303,396
- 2020: 355,414 (-84.6%)

Over the first nine months of the year, YVR has seen just 6.4 million passengers — down from 20.3 million over the same period in 2019. At this rate, YVR will only reach about seven million passengers for all of 2020, which is about a quarter of last year.

Total runway aircraft movements over the month reached 10,631, representing a 57% decrease over the 24,713 movements in September 2019. But this exceeds August 2020’s figure of 9,806 runway aircraft movements.

Jet aircraft accounted for 5,830 of these runway movements — down by 60.7% compared to the 14,853 over the same month last year, but up from 5,273 in August 2020.

Air cargo volumes continue to trend towards normal, with 19,810 tonnes recorded in August 2020, which is a 21.7% drop from the 25,298 tonnes over the same period in 2019. Cargo has seen continuous increases from the 50% drop experienced in April 2020.

Monthly aviation statistics are compiled and released approximately two months after the fact.

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