WARWICK – Passenger traffic at T.F. Green Airport increased 13.1 percent year over year to 381,544 total passengers in August 2017, an increase of over 44,000 passengers, according to an R.I. Airport Corp. monthly airport activity summary.
The total number of passengers enplaned at the airport increased 12.4 percent year over year in August to 190,676 passengers.
Year to date, overall traffic at T.F. Green Airport increased 16.7 percent year over year to 2.8 million passengers, while enplaned passengers increased 16.6 percent to 1.4 million passengers.
Southwest Airlines remained the airport’s largest passenger airline, processing 153,736 passengers in August, an increase of 10,557 customers year over year and accounting for 40.3 percent of all traffic at T.F. Green.
Year to date, 1.2 million total passengers have used Southwest Airlines at T.F. Green, more than any other airline by a significant margin. The second-largest carrier year to date was American Airlines, which accounted for 596,206 passengers through T.F. Green.
Notably, in August, the new low-budget airlines Norwegian Air and Frontier Airlines combined for 33,958 total passengers. Frontier, in its first month accounted for 11,361 passengers (3 percent of all traffic) while Norwegian accounted for 22,597 passengers (5.9 percent of all traffic).
Year to date, Norwegian has accounted for 43,709 passengers through T.F. Green in its third month of operation. However, Norwegian only accounted for 905 passengers in June.
Of airlines that had operated in August 2016, Southwest Airlines reported the largest nominal uptick in passenger numbers, increasing 10,557 passengers year over year in August.
For the month, 2.5 million pounds of cargo was enplaned and deplaned at T.F. Green, an increase of 4.4 percent year over year. The increase was primarily driven by an 11.1 percent increase in enplaned cargo to 1.1 million pounds.
Year to date, total cargo processed at the airport grew by 415,249 pounds to 17.7 million pounds, a 2.4 percent increase year over year.
The top three mail and freight carriers at T.F. Green in August were Federal Express (1.3 million pounds), United Parcel Service (916,756 pounds) and Wiggins Airways (241,075 pounds). Year to date, Federal Express has enplaned and deplaned 9.6 million pounds of mail and freight at T.F. Green.
Overall, 5,745 operations landed or departed from T.F. green in August, with a total of 7,263 operations for the month.
Chris Bergenheim is the PBN web editor.
