Airport News:

Southwest Florida Reports a Drop in March Traffic

FORT MYERS, Fla. - April 22 - During March, 985,267 passengers traveled through Southwest Florida International Airport, a decrease of 4.4 percent compared to March 2008. Year-to-date, passenger traffic is down 4.2 percent over the same period last year.

The traffic leader in March was AirTran with 170,337 passengers traveling to and from Fort Myers. Rounding out the top five airlines were JetBlue (122,569), Delta (108,418), Southwest (95,305) and US Airways (93,014).

Southwest Florida International Airport had 10,143 aircraft movements (takeoffs and landings), a decrease of 8.4 percent over March 2008. Page Field General Aviation Airport saw 7,274 movements, a 6.7 percent increase from March 2008. In addition, more than 2.8 million pounds of air freight moved through both airports in March 2009.

Southwest Florida International Airport served more than 7.6 million passengers in 2008 and is one of the top 50 U.S. airports for passenger traffic.