The passenger gates at Reno-Tahoe International Airport remain relatively quiet as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, but the changes wrought by the pandemic appear to be boosting the cargo side of the airport’s operations.
The airport recently reported that carriers handled 6,071 metric tons of cargo — that’s about 13.4 million pounds — during July. The figure marked a 6.8% increase from the same month a year earlier and an increase of more than 7% from June’s cargo shipments.
The figures for air cargo historically have been viewed as a good proxy for the overall health of the Reno-Sparks economy. Their importance becomes all the greater as the region becomes home to more and more internet fulfillment centers that rely on air as well as ground transportation to get orders to customers.
As the economy began weakening early this year, the volume of cargo handled by the airport declined by 7.5% the first quarter. The gradual recovery that began this spring, in turn, was reflected in gradual improvement of cargo numbers. The airport’s cargo volume was down less than 1% in the second quarter compared with the same time a year earlier.
FedEx played a key role in handling this summer’s increase in cargo. The airport said cargo handled by the delivery giant in Reno during July rose by 13.6% compared with the same month last year. Tonnage handled by UPS was down 3.4%, and tonnage handled by DHL was down 0.2%.
The airport’s passenger business, while still miserable during July, got somewhat less miserable.
Just about 141,000 passengers came through the airport. The good news: That marked a 43% increase in passenger traffic compared with June. The bad news: The July figure still was only a third of the number of passengers who came through the airport during the busy travel month a year earlier.
As airlines have aggressively trimmed the number of their flights to address the sharp decline in travel, the number of seats available on planes departing from Reno in July declined by 53% from a year earlier.
But even with sharply reduced numbers of flights and some shifts to smaller aircraft on routes that previously used larger planes, flights at Reno were barely half full during July — 53.4% full compared with 81% in July 2019.
Southwest, long the dominant passenger airline at RNO, substantially increased its share of the market during July. It held 45.8% of the passenger market, up from 38.5% a year earlier. Much of the gain came at the expense of United, whose 10.2% share of the market in July was down more than 5% from last year.
