While traffic is increasing at the Indianapolis International Airport, it looks significantly different than it did in 2019.
Leisure travelers are returning quickly, but that can’t be said for more lucrative business travelers. Large, legacy airlines have taken notice offering routes to more leisure destinations.
Mario Rodriguez is the executive director of the Indianapolis Airport Authority. He believes up to 25% of pre-pandemic business travel could never return.
But, he assures the airport is no longer in as dire a financial situation as it was this time last year. It’s just serving far fewer passengers.
“We’re back to business as usual for a smaller footprint of an airport for lack of a better term," he said. "We almost had 10 million passengers, and we were expecting 10 million passengers in 2020—we almost had 10 million in 2019. So, we’re probably operating an airport right now that runs about 5 million passengers a year."
While the number of passengers is markedly lower, air cargo increased considerably last year. The airport handled 11% more cargo in 2020 than it did in 2019.
