YVR Airport sees strong passenger numbers in early 2024

Vancouver International Airport sees strong passenger numbers in early 2024

Vancouver International Airport (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Vancouver International Airport (YVR) has experienced its second-strongest first quarter ever for passenger volumes.

Newly released statistics for all first three months of 2024 show YVR recorded 5.99 million passengers, with 1.97 million in January, 1.92 million in February, and 2.1 million in March.

This total is slightly behind the first-quarter record of 6.03 million in the first quarter of 2024, and it comes ahead of the 5.495 million in the first quarter of 2023 and the 5.88 million in the first quarter of 2018.

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Each of the first three months of 2024 saw higher passenger numbers than the same month in 2023, with January seeing a 10% year-over-year increase to 1.97 million, February seeing a 13% year-over-year increase to 1.92 million, and March seeing a nearly 5% year-over-year increase to 2.1 million.

For March 2024, the latest month of the full statistics, YVR saw 977,000 domestic passengers, 545,000 US transborder passengers, and 581,000 non-US international passengers, including 321,000 for the Asia Pacific, 92,000 for Europe, and 168,000 for other international.

Compared to the first quarters of 2023 and 2019, when 1.001 million domestic passengers were recorded for each of these quarters, there was a 2.5% decrease in domestic volumes in the first quarter of 2024. But US transborder and Europe volumes were up compared to the first quarter of 2023 and almost on par with the first quarter of 2019. Asia Pacific volumes have recovered to about 85% of pre-pandemic 2019 volumes, with the continued lower volumes to Mainland China being a leading factor.

YVR’s figures for March 2024 saw a slight hit from Lynx Air’s shutdown starting on February 26, 2024. The short-lived ultra-low-cost airline grew its capacity to and from YVR to over 12,000 seats on routes across its North American network as of December 2023, representing a hit of about 50,000 seats to YVR.

But YVR has also gained additional capacity so far this spring, including new permanent frequent services by Zipair to Tokyo, Air Canada to Singapore, and Porter Airlines to Montreal, as well as a new seasonal service by WestJet to Detroit.

YVR could potentially see a strong 2024 annual total that comes close to the all-time record annual total of 26.4 million passengers in 2019. In 2023, YVR saw 24.9 million passengers, making it the third-best performing year for Canada’s second busiest airport.

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