What does airport travel in Florida and Miami look like since COVID? See the changes
Editor’s note: This story and visualization are part of our new “Data In Your Life” series, in which we mine public databases to tell quick stories about the world around us.
Record numbers of travelers are passing through American airports. Europe has more American tourists than ever, even in Serbia. The number of people taking cruises reached an all-time high for two straight years, a boon to Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
The worst days and months of COVID-19 forced people indoors and uprooted lives. It also complicated travel worldwide.
Today, more Americans are taking to the skies. In 2023, airport traffic in Florida was up 10% compared to 2019. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that he expects record-breaking travel to continue in the coming months.
The U.S. Department of Transportation publishes data on the number of passengers flying to or from a given airport. The chart below shows the number of passengers who flew to or from a Florida airport from 2019 to 2023.
Florida is one of 25 states that has returned to pre-pandemic levels of air travel.
The state has come a long way. In 2020 in Florida, airport traffic dropped almost 55% versus 2019 amid massive uncertainty.
In the U.S., states ordered lockdowns, sending kids home from school, closing “non-essential” businesses and telling people to stay home to reduce the disease spread. Cruise ships were not allowed to sail. And travel bans were issued for non-U.S. citizens from select countries due to COVID.
Complicated travel
As the world began to reopen, the way people travel changed. Every country had its own COVID rules for entering, including testing, masks, vaccine and quarantine procedures.
And as the COVID risk changed, so did the testing and quarantine rules, making it challenging, and sometimes confusing, for travelers planning a trip.
READ MORE: Digital vaccine passports? Testing requirements? What the future of travel looks like
Many countries required proof of a negative COVID test or proof of COVID vaccination for entry. In the U.S., while vaccines were never required for domestic traveling, there were testing and vaccine rules for international travelers.
Masks were required on planes. And many American airports, including in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, opened COVID test sites to help make testing easier and more accessible to travelers.
Resurgence in Miami
Emblematic of the travel recovery in Florida is Miami International Airport. In 2023, MIA set a new record in traffic with 52.3 million passengers. That was a 3.2% increase over the 2022 figure of 50.7 million people, which at that time was an all-time high.
The growth was driven by international passengers, which jumped by 8.5% to 23.2 million.
Domestic travel at the Miami airport in 2023 was 29.1 million, down by 0.5% from the prior year. Still, that number exceeded the 23.5 million visitors from within the U.S. that used the region’s largest airport in 2019.
A major reason for that is through 2022, many American tech and finance professionals moved to South Florida from New York, California and elsewhere. They were drawn by the state and region’s decisions to open up from COVID-19 faster than their home states. And they started investing or building companies in the Magic City. Hedge funds, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs set up shop in Miami.
Miami International Airport’s overall growth was largely driven by American Airlines, its main carrier. The carrier had an all-time 380 peak-day flights in 2023. Delta had a record 38 peak-day departures to 13 destinations from MIA
But new discount airlines like Norse Atlantic Airways and Porter Airlines also started flying into Miami last year. In March, German low-cost airline Condor Airlines started non-stop flights between Frankfurt and Miami. Air Serbia is in talks to start a nonstop direct flight between Miami and Belgrade later this year.
Reflective of the region’s drive to travel more, Miami International Airport has posted records on major holidays such as the recent Fourth of July.
AAA estimated that over the recent Fourth of July, 4.5 million Floridians traveled 50 miles or more away from their home, 7% more than in 2023 and a new record. In AAA’s ranking of most sought after destinations based on its booking data, Miami ranked fifth and Fort Lauderdale seventh.
In a report, the group wrote that, “despite concerns about inflation, total travel is increasing on growth in consumer confidence, wages, and continued strength in consumer spending.”
New flights at Miami airport
In June, Emirates, a flagship carrier of the United Arab Emirates, started a daily flight between Miami and Bogotá. It’s a continuation of the Dubai-Miami route and meant to better connect Colombia with the Gulf countries. Airline officials returned to Miami in July to recruit flight crews. The wide-body, three-class Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft has 354 seats across three cabins.
The new service nearly by itself increased the number of flights between Miami and Bogotá in June to 298, 18% more than June 2023, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
Last year, LATAM added a new daily flight from Miami to Medellin. American Airlines also has dozens of flights between Miami and Colombia.
Avianca, which dates back to 1919, has about 62 weekly flights between Miami and Latin America. On July 1, it added business class to its daily flights between Miami and Bogotá.
MIA’s growth has come with growing pains. Complaints about the state of the Miami airport have gotten so bad that Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava recently held a news briefing there about the issues.
Passengers have complained about broken elevators and escalators. Last September, Skytrain shut down. The system, which provides an alternative to long walks in Concourse D, American Airlines’ home, is not yet completely up and running.
Changes at Fort Lauderdale airport
In South Florida, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport also saw growth, with about 35 million travelers in 2023, a 10% increase from 31.7 million in 2022.
While that figure is still below its 2019 mark of 36.7 million travelers, FLL expects to surpass it in 2025.
One reason for the expected growth is that the airport is near Port Everglades, one of the country’s biggest seaports for cruise passengers. Last year, the port started a minimum 15-year agreement with Disney Cruises Lines.
It also started work last October on building a $404 million, fifth airline terminal that will add five passenger gates.
