April 2025 was good, and slightly less good, for passenger traffic at Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW).
RSW recorded the second best April in its existence with 1,178,980 passengers traveling through its Fort Myers facility — an increase of four percent compared to April 2024.
But the airport also reported that on a year-to-date basis, passenger traffic was down 1.8 percent.
For Florida overall, on Tuesday the latest data released showed that the state set a new all-time annual record in 2024 with 143 million visitors—an increase of 1.7% over the previous record set in 2023.
This growth includes 130.65 million domestic travelers, 8.94 million overseas visitors, and 3.41 million Canadian tourists. And, in 2024, the State of Florida collected billions in sales tax revenue from these tourists.
For foreign visitors, however, state figures showed the number of international visitors to Florida declined during the first quarter of 2025 when compared to the same period in 2024.
The News Service of Florida reported Tuesday that preliminary April numbers from Statistics Canada, the nation’s data office, found 1.2 million Canadians returned by car from the United States, a 35.2 percent drop from April 2024. Statistics Canada said it was the fourth consecutive month of year-over-year declines.
Governor Ron DeSantis also announced Tuesday that Florida welcomed 41.2 million visitors in the first quarter of 2025.
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At RSW, the traffic leader in April was Delta with 238,915 passengers. Rounding out the top five airlines were Southwest (183,938), American (171,114), United (159,436) and JetBlue (114,552).
Southwest Florida International Airport had 10,215 aircraft operations, an increase of 9 percent compared to April 2024.
The area's former main airport — Page Field — saw 12,664 operations, which was a 13 percent decrease compared to April 2024.
Southwest Florida International Airport served more than 11 million passengers in 2024 and is one of the top 50 U.S. airports for passenger traffic.
For more information, visit flylcpa.com or facebook.com/flyRSW.
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