MoBay passenger traffic stalls at a fifth below pre-Melissa levels

Passenger traffic through Sangster International Airport remained 23 per cent below year-earlier levels in August, with the shortfall little changed since June despite a steep recovery in the first half of the year.

The Montego Bay airport handled 344,600 passengers in August 2026, down 23.0 per cent from 447,400 a year earlier, according to a monthly traffic report released on September 4 by Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP), the Mexican operator of the airport.

For the January-August period, traffic totalled 2.63 million passengers, down 26.2 per cent from 3.56 million in the corresponding period of 2025.

The monthly declines have narrowed sharply from the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Melissa but have since levelled off. Montego Bay was down 37.7 per cent in January, 23.4 per cent in June and 26.6 per cent in July, before August’s 23.0 per cent.

Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport has posted stronger performance. The airport handled 205,100 passengers in August, up 2.8 per cent from a year earlier, while year-to-date traffic was down just 1.5 per cent.

“With respect to GAP’s airports in Jamaica, Kingston airport recorded an increase of 2.8 per cent, while Montego Bay airport recorded a decrease of 23.0 per cent,” the company said in its September 4 traffic report.

Hurricane Melissa struck on October 28 last year. Kingston resumed commercial operations on October 30 and Montego Bay, which sustained the heavier damage, on October 31, after GAP flew in a technical and maintenance team from Mexico.

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett gave a different measure of the shortfall at a Jamaica Information Service Think Tank on September 2, reporting visitor arrivals rather than airport passengers. He said Jamaica had welcomed 2.34 million visitors and earned US$2.5 billion as of August 31.

“This is 17 per cent less than last year, to date, in terms of arrivals and 18 per cent down in terms of revenue,” Bartlett said.

Bartlett said about 70 per cent of the country’s room stock is currently available.

“What we’re seeing also is that this 30 per cent represents some of the most demanding rooms inventory in the country ... and they are coming back, but not until the end of the year to [the] first quarter [of next year],” he said.

The tourism minister also pointed to continuing constraints in airline capacity.

“They are not able to give us the level of airlift that we had pre-Melissa, but they are able to keep the routes going ... and the good news is that they are flying full on every occasion,” Bartlett said.

carolyn.guniss@rjrgleaner.com