Passengers are flying out of Syracuse’s Hancock International Airport in numbers the airport has not seen in a decade. The passenger traffic at Hancock this past April was up over 18 percent compared to April of 2017. It is the highest number the airport has seen in over ten years according to Airport Executive Director Christina Callahan. It punctuates a 10 percent increase in traffic the first four months of 2018.
"The economy has played an important role, whether that’s additional discretionary money for leisure trips, or growth in business for business travel,” Callahan said. “But also, we’ve been focused very much on bringing in additional markets, and additional capacity.”
The numbers will only increase. Next week, Allegiant Air will start offering new nonstop service from Syracuse to Orlando, followed by a Nashville non-stop next month. Then Frontier Airlines starts flying non-stop to Raleigh-Durham and Denver in July.
“We expect double digit increases and a very busy summer,” Callahan said.
All this comes in the midst of a major renovation of the airport terminal. Callahan said there is some relief on the way.
"We will begin to reopen portions of the terminal this summer, starting with the center terminal,” Callahan said. “This should ease some of the congestion that we’ve seen in the terminal building.”
An almost $49 million terminal renovation project is expected to be finished by late October.
