Airport Closing In On Pre-Pandemic Traffic

Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. Image from the airport.

Air travel continues to rebound from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport is closing in on its pre-pandemic level of passenger traffic.

For the first time since 2019, Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport will likely have more than 6 million air passengers traveling through the airport. In 2019, the last full year that the airport operated without the pandemic affecting air travel, Milwaukee Mitchell served approximately 6.9 million travelers.

“2023 has been a year of growth at MKE,” Airport Director Brian Dranzik said in a statement on Dec. 13. “We’ve already seen more than five million passengers travel through the Airport this year, and we expect to pass the six million mark by the end of 2023.

The latest passenger data is from October of this year. The confirmed passenger numbers for all of 2023 are expected by the end of January 2024.

In October, the airport was already at approximately 5 million passengers, with half a million people traveling through the airport in both October and September. A year ago at that time, the airport was well below five million and registering less than 500,000 passengers a month in October and September.

The increased passenger traffic is driven by strong growth in leisure travel and a more gradual rebound in business travel, as well as new destinations and flights added to the airport’s schedule, according to airport officials.

“We meet with all airlines (both new and existing) on a frequent basis, aggressively pitching Milwaukee as a great place for airlines to add service or expand existing service,” Harold Mester, director of public affairs and marketing told Urban Milwaukee. “We compete with hundreds of other airports asking for more service, so it is a big win anytime we secure more service for our community.”

This is why the airport has, for the past several years, conducted a marketing campaign aimed at convincing Milwaukee and Wisconsin-based travelers to use Milwaukee Mitchell as their primary airport. “Airline network planners always tell us the best thing our community can do to get more service from Milwaukee is to create demand by always flying from MKE rather than from other airports in our region,” Mester said.

In the past year, Milwaukee Mitchell has landed a number of additional flights and new destinations, and saw service return after disappearing during the pandemic. Seasonal travel to warm-weather destinations has also been picking up. It’s likely that Milwaukee Mitchell will continue to see carriers adding service out of Milwaukee in 2024, Mester said.

“Since the beginning of 2023, the Airport’s growth has been fueled by the addition of new destinations,” Dranzik said.