LA County Airports See Slim Passenger Growth in February

Hollywood Burbank Airport posted a 6.5% drop in passenger traffic this past February, making it the worst performer among the four airports that serve Los Angeles County. Long Beach slipped 3.1%. The regional numbers tell a complicated story, one that matters a lot if you work in the aviation and logistics clusters that stretch from Burbank down to Ontario.

Across all four airports, just over 6 million passengers moved through gates in February, up a thin 0.6% from the same month last year. That’s not nothing. But given how badly February 2025 was hit by the Palisades and Eaton fires, which scared off tourists and pushed travelers toward other destinations, a 0.6% overall gain feels underwhelming.

Ontario International ran the table.

Passenger traffic there jumped 6.4% compared with February of last year, driven almost entirely by a 55% surge in international travelers. That international base is still small compared to LAX, which is why percentage swings look so dramatic, but the trend has been building for months. Domestic traffic at Ontario grew a more modest 2%. Atif Elkadi, chief executive officer of the Ontario International Airport Authority, credited the airport’s decade under local management. “As we approach 10 years of local ownership, [Ontario International Airport] has evolved into a gateway that reflects the energy and growth of the Inland Empire and greater Southern California,” Elkadi said in the authority’s release of the February figures. From 1967 to 2016, Los Angeles World Airports ran Ontario alongside LAX. Local control returned in 2016, and the authority has pushed marketing hard since then.

The LAX numbers are more interesting than they first appear. A 0.9% year-over-year gain is slim, but it marks the second consecutive month of positive movement for an airport that went the entire year of 2025 without a single month of year-over-year growth. LAX still sits roughly 18% below its pre-pandemic 2019 passenger levels, a gap that makes it the biggest laggard among major U.S. airports. Two consecutive positive months don’t erase that, but they do suggest the floor may finally be in. A possible trend reversal, not a recovery. Not yet.

Still, headwinds are already piling up for March and beyond.

A partial government shutdown that started during February created staffing shortages at the Transportation Security Administration, which slowed screening lanes at airports across the country. Those delays got significantly worse in March as the TSA agent shortage deepened. At the same time, aviation fuel costs spiked sharply following the U.S. and Israel’s joint attack on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Persian Gulf. Airfares climbed as a result. Higher fares tend to compress discretionary travel fast, particularly on leisure routes that Burbank and Long Beach depend on heavily.

That combination, tighter TSA capacity and a fuel-driven fare spike, could hit Hollywood Burbank harder than LAX or Ontario. Burbank’s passenger base skews toward budget-conscious travelers on short-haul domestic routes. When fares jump, those travelers have options.

One bright spot cuts across the regional picture. Air cargo tonnage at both LAX and Ontario posted gains of roughly 10% in February. Freight doesn’t carry the same visibility as passenger counts, but for the thousands of logistics and ground-handling workers tied to those operations, a 10% cargo bump represents real volume. Ontario’s cargo business has grown steadily since local control returned, and that growth is part of why the Inland Empire’s warehouse and distribution sector keeps attracting investment.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks monthly airport data that puts these local numbers in national context, and the LAX recovery gap compared to peer airports is stark when you pull up the full data set.

Reporting from the LA Business Journal first flagged the mixed February results and the potential March complications.

For Burbank specifically, the 6.5% drop lands at a moment when the airport’s long-term future is already under discussion. Hollywood Burbank serves a community that relies on quick, low-friction travel to keep production schedules and business meetings on track. A sustained passenger decline makes it harder to attract new routes and airline capacity, which then makes the decline worse. That feedback loop is slow-moving but real.

March numbers won’t land for several weeks. When they do, the TSA staffing story and the fuel cost story will both be visible in the data. So will any demand softening from travelers who looked at their fare quotes and just decided to stay home.