Winter storms that blasted the Northeast and South in recent weeks — causing flight delays and cancellations around the country — led to slightly fewer passengers flying out of the Orlando International Airport this holiday season compared to the previous one.
The airport — known by its code MCO — saw more than 1.4 million passengers fly out of the airfield between Dec. 20 and Jan. 5, what officials consider the “holiday period.”
That’s 6,802 fewer flyers than the previous holiday period that saw just over 1.44 million passengers, according to statistics provided to the Orlando Sentinel by MCO.
Before the recent storms, officials were forecasting 14,416 more passengers this holiday season than last because of high travel demand and low airfares into and out of Orlando.
Still, the airport was crowded during the holidays. The single busiest day for departures this season was Jan. 4, when 100,208 passengers took to the skies out of Orlando.
That was the second busiest day on record at MCO, said Angela Starke, an airport spokesperson.
The busiest day ever was March 16, 2024, when the airport handled a crush of 102,064 departing passengers, she said.
On that March day, the airport was among the busiest of all U.S. airports for the volume of passengers walking through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, surpassing Los Angeles, New York’s JFK and Atlanta.
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Orlando’s airport in recent years has become more jam packed during March spring break weeks than Thanksgiving and Christmas, officials said.
The least traveled day this holiday season was Christmas Day, when 55,679 passengers flew out of Orlando. That’s 5,432 fewer departing passengers than Christmas Day 2023.
“Overall, demand remains high” at Orlando’s airport, Starke said.
MCO opened its glitzy Terminal C in late 2022, built to handle 10 million to 12 million passengers a year, to help handle an expected increase in travelers.
The airport is now looking into a multi-billion dollar plan to expand and modernize its aging north terminal complex. The complex is now designed to accommodate between 45 million and 50 million passengers annually.
Last year, MCO saw more than 65 million passengers. The busiest flight route in 2024 in the country was from Orlando to Atlanta with 3.4 million airline seats booked, according to OAG, a data platform for the travel industry.