New Nonstop Flights Announced; Passenger Traffic Up 7.1 Percent in June at Pittsburgh International Airport
PITTSBURGH – New nonstop flights to West Palm Beach and Scranton, Pa. announced this week, along with the start of service to Seattle in September and additional service to San Francisco, will continue boosting passenger traffic at Pittsburgh International Airport throughout the fall.
Ultra low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines will connect Pittsburgh and West Palm Beach with twice-weekly seasonal flights beginning Nov. 17 on an Airbus A320 family aircraft. The service complements nonstop flights offered on Southwest in February and March. Frontier also serves Denver, Orlando and San Diego with nonstops from Pittsburgh.
United Airlines, which began a second daily flight to San Francisco in June, has extended that service through Oct. 26, and will resume service between PIT and SFO for the holidays from Dec. 19, 2018 to January 6, 2019.
Beginning Sept. 5, Southern Airways Express will operate twice daily service to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, taking over the route from Regional Sky. Southern serves seven Pennsylvania cities with nonstops from Pittsburgh International, including Lancaster, Franklin and Johnstown.
“New routes, seat growth and additional flights are responsible for these increases that we have seen for three years,” said CEO Christina Cassotis, citing more than 6 percent growth in available seats year-over-year in June. “The fact that our passenger numbers are growing faster than seat capacity tells me that our market is still underserved and can support more service.”
In June, passenger traffic was up 7.1 percent and 9.8 percent year-to-date. A total of 891,729 passengers traveled through PIT as compared with 832,781 in June 2017. Through June, 4,609,756 total passengers had traveled through PIT compared with 4,199,354 through June 2017.
New service added in the last 12 months by Air Canada, Allegiant and Spirit, as well as capacity growth to San Francisco on United, to Boston on JetBlue and to Delta and Dallas/Ft. Worth on American, all contributed to the growth in seats and flights for the month.
Additionally, Southwest began new seasonal Saturday-only service to Cancun, Mexico on June 9, and United began offering two daily roundtrip flights between Pittsburgh and San Francisco on June 7. The new SFO schedule offers complementary departure times (morning and evening). Previously, United operated only one daily flight.
Looking ahead, new nonstop flights to Seattle on Alaska Airlines begin Sept. 6, and nonstop flights to San Juan, Puerto Rico on Allegiant begin on Dec. 15.