SAN JOSE As the Bay Area’s three major airports prepare for increased holiday traffic, passenger trends in 2024 for both San Jose International Airport and San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport are trailing 2023 numbers, according to this news organizations analysis of monthly reports issued by the aviation hubs.

But in contrast to its smaller Bay Area rivals, San Francisco Airport is trending higher in 2024 compared with 2023.

Should the regions major airports continue on their current trajectory, it could take years for them to reach their previous heights if they ever do.

After the pandemic ended, people presumed that we would go back to the same travel patterns, but now were finding that this is not necessarily true, said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based think tank.

Passenger trips collapsed at all three airports in 2020 compared with 2019 due to COVID-related lockdowns. Then, travel rebounded dramatically in 2021 compared with 2020, and again in 2022 compared with 2021.

But while passenger trips continued to improve in 2023, the increase in activity last year at all three airports occurred at a drastically slower pace than the jumps in 2021 and 2022 – suggesting that the pace of improvement may have plateaued.

Maybe we found our new normal in 2023, Hancock said.

Passengers arrive on one of the busiest travel days of the year at San José Mineta International Airport last year during the holiday season. For the first nine months of 2024 the San Jose airport average trips were down 2.6% from the monthly average in 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Here are the most recent statistics for the three airports, as recorded through September:

For the first nine months of 2024, San Jose Airport averaged 981,000 passenger trips a month, down 2.6% from the monthly average of 1.01 million passengers in 2023.

Oakland Airport in 2024 averaged 920,000 passenger trips a month, down 1.7% from the 937,000 passenger trips a month in 2023.

San Francisco Airport averaged 4.31 million passengers, up 3.1% from a monthly average of 4.18 million passenger trips in 2023.

San Jose International Airport passenger trips zoomed higher during the summer, but began to fade after the vacation travel season concluded this year. Oakland and San Francisco airports saw a similar pattern.

While San Francisco Airport is showing greater recent strength in activity, passenger trips at all three airports remain a great distance from the altitudes at which they were cruising just before the onset of pandemic shutdowns in March 2020.

Jets depart in the rain at San Francisco International Airport, Tuesday morning, Dec. 19, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

San Jose has been the slowest to recover. During the 12 months that ended in September, it accommodated 11.83 million passengers, down 24.4% from 2019, when the South Bay aviation hub handled a record-high 15.65 million passengers. That was the final full year before the start of the shutdowns.

Over the 12 months ending in September, San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport handled 11.13 million passengers, down 16.8% from 2019, when the East Bay travel complex handled 13.38 million passengers.

San Francisco Airport during the 12 months ending in September accommodated 51.14 million passengers, which was down 11.1% from the 57.49 million passengers it handled in 2019.

Experts say the increased use of remote technologies for handling meetings has dampened interest in travel to numerous business-oriented destinations, which could be the case with San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.

Conventions and conferences can still be popular, as we saw with the Nvidia conference in San Jose, Hancock said. But the garden-variety meetings that used to be done in person, those arent happening.

The new technology dynamics appear to have stymied travel through the primary airports that handle business trips in the Bay Area.

Without a doubt, these three airports and hotel markets are more business-oriented, said Alan Reay, president of Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group, which tracks the California lodging market. They are heavily reliant on commercial business traffic.

Now that the summer travel season has ended, airport officials and airlines are looking to the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years holiday periods for a fresh bump in activity.

In encouraging news, airfare costs wont hit passengers with sticker shock compared with the prices to which they are accustomed, experts say.

Prices are likely to be in line with 2023 levels, and below 2019 levels for airfare, the booking app Hopper stated in September.