SARASOTA – Between 2018 and 2019, Sarasota Bradenton International Airport was the fastest-growing airport in the U.S., with 43% growth, SRQ Chief Operating Officer Mark Stuckey told the Manatee County Tourist Development Council on Oct. 18.
According to data provided by Stuckey, COVID-19 slowed passenger numbers significantly in 2020, but as travel restrictions began to lift, the numbers started to creep back up to where they were before the pandemic.
“We had a 326,000 passenger month in June, so we are probably the fastest growing airport in the United States, even for this year alone,” Stuckey said. “A lot of that is from the carriers that we have added.”
The combined inbound and outbound seats at SRQ have not only increased, but the growth is beyond what any airport, regardless of size, is experiencing over the 2019-21 period, he said. The airport saw 1,828,170 total seats in 2019, but that number so far in 2021 has risen to 4,582,660, a 151% increase from the pre-COVID total. Stuckey says the prediction for 2022 is well over 5 million seats.
“This is not normal for any other airports in Florida; it’s really driven by the community in Manatee and Sarasota County and the growth we’ve seen in these two counties,” said Stuckey, who also credits growth to new destination cities among current carriers and new carriers such as Avelo Airlines that will begin flights to Connecticut in January 2022.
SRQ is also the fastest recovering airport in the U.S. following the peak of the pandemic, with a 154% increase in July compared to July 2019. The second-fastest recovering airport for that same time period is Myrtle Beach, which saw a 66.4% increase, less than half of SRQ.
In March 2018, SRQ had six airlines and 12 non-stop destinations. As of August 2021, the airport served 10 airlines and 50 non-stop destinations, which is unprecedented in the U.S. for that period of time, and one of the main factors contributing to the record-breaking passenger growth, he said.
In addition to passenger growth, SRQ has several improvement projects underway to allow infrastructure to keep up with the increased demand. The largest of these projects is the fuel farm expansion.
“We only had 90,000 gallons of fuel storage at the airport, and that’s not enough to get you through a day,” Stuckey said. “We were having to bring in 10 or more tanker trucks a day just to get us through.”
The fuel farm expansion added two 100,000-gallon fuel tanks, which brings the total fuel storage to 290,000 gallons. A third tank is currently being installed and should be in use within weeks, at which time the total fuel storage will be 400,000 gallons. A new administration building and office space for the fuel farm staff is currently under construction.
A parking lot expansion was recently completed, adding 344 much-needed new spaces. 140 new parking spaces were added to the south end of the long-term lot, and 204 paved parking spaces were added to the grass overflow lot adjacent to the shaded parking lot.
The third recently completed project is a security checkpoint expansion. Stuckey said they began seeing backups at the airport’s four security checkpoints early this year and knew that getting more lanes open had to be high priority. The facility now has six checkpoints, which have improved wait times significantly.
