Business

AVL passenger total tops 2 million again

By Lightning Reports, Published: February 6, 2025

Asheville Regional Airport served 2,174,125 passengers in 2024, the second highest number in the airport’s history and the second straight year that the total topped 2 million.

The big year of passenger utilization came after a dramatic increase of 22.2 percent in 2023, that marked the first year AVL served more than 2 million passengers. Year over year, the airport had only a modest decrease in 2024 from the previous record-setting year mainly because of the number of passengers dropped by 3 percent in the months immediately after Hurricane Helene.

“We knew the storm could affect passenger numbers,” AVL President and CEO Lew Bleiweis said in a news release. “To surpass the 2 million passenger mark for two years in a row is a testament to our community. AVL continues to be an important gateway to and from western North Carolina.”

The first three quarters of 2024 maintained and surpassed projections based on 2023’s passenger data and demonstrated the popularity of the region as a nationally recognized travel destination," Bleiweis said. Local residents maintained the trend of flying from their preferred regional airport, and the airlines increased their services, adding frequency, replacing smaller planes with larger jets to accommodate more passengers and announcing new nonstop destinations. This included addition of nonstop flights to Orlando International Airport.

"We want to extend our gratitude to our airline partners for continuing to believe in our region as a premier destination and to our residents for choosing to fly local and using AVL as their airport,” Bleiweis said.

Meanwhile, Phase 1 of AVL Forward has continued uninterrupted, including construction of the new north concourse, which is slated to open this summer.

In its biennial "State of Aviation" report on the economic impact of North Carolina's airports, the North Carolina Division of Aviation said AVL supports 22,745 jobs, more than $1 billion in personal income and $3.9 billion in economic impact for western North Carolina.