LA County Airports See Slim Passenger Growth in February

Hollywood Burbank Airport recorded a 6.5% drop in passenger traffic for February, the steepest decline of any airport serving Los Angeles County. Long Beach wasn’t far behind, sliding 3.1%. For anyone working in aviation or logistics anywhere from Burbank down to Ontario, those numbers deserve a closer look.

The four-county airport system moved just over 6 million passengers in February combined, a 0.6% gain over the same month a year earlier. That’s barely a rounding error. And it’s worth remembering that February 2025 took a direct hit from the Palisades and Eaton fires, which drove tourists away and scrambled travel patterns across the region. Against that backdrop, 0.6% growth doesn’t inspire confidence.

Ontario International ran in the opposite direction entirely.

Passenger volume at Ontario jumped 6.4% year over year, fueled by a 55% surge in international travelers. That’s a striking figure, though it reflects a still-small international base compared with LAX, which is why the percentage looks so large. Domestic traffic at Ontario climbed a steadier 2%. Atif Elkadi, the chief executive officer of the Ontario International Airport Authority, put the gains in historical context. “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.

That ownership history is worth knowing. From 1967 to 2016, Los Angeles World Airports controlled Ontario alongside LAX. Local management returned in 2016, and the authority has been pushing hard on marketing and airline recruitment ever since. The February numbers suggest that work isn’t wasted.

LAX posted a 0.9% year-over-year gain. Thin, yes. But it’s the second straight month of positive movement for an airport that didn’t post a single month of year-over-year growth across all of 2025. That streak of positives is worth tracking. LAX still sits roughly 18% below its pre-pandemic 2019 passenger levels, a deficit that makes it the biggest laggard among major U.S. airports, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Two good months don’t close that gap. What they might signal is that the floor is finally holding. Don’t call it a recovery yet.

Headwinds are already building for March and beyond, though.

A partial government shutdown that began in February created staffing shortfalls at the Transportation Security Administration, slowing checkpoint lines at airports nationwide. Those problems got measurably worse through March as the agent shortage deepened. Simultaneously, aviation fuel costs spiked following the U.S. and Israel’s joint strike on Iran and the closure of the Persian Gulf. Airlines passed those costs up the chain. Fares rose. Higher airfares compress leisure travel fast, and that’s a particular problem for Burbank and Long Beach, both of which depend heavily on discretionary routes.

For Burbank specifically, the February slide isn’t a single bad month in isolation. The airport’s been navigating construction disruptions tied to its new terminal project, which has complicated the passenger experience. Add a fire-damaged tourism market and a fare spike, and it’s a tough combination. The airport’s numbers, reported through the LA Business Journal, show a facility that’s dealing with structural headwinds alongside the cyclical ones.

Ontario’s trajectory looks different. It’s building on a younger marketing identity, it’s got room to grow its international routes, and it’s pulling traffic from an Inland Empire population that’s grown substantially since 2016. The 55% international surge is the kind of number that gets airline route planners interested.

Across the four airports, the February data reflects a Southern California aviation market that isn’t moving in one direction. Ontario’s climbing. LAX is stabilizing, slowly. Burbank and Long Beach are slipping. That’s not a simple story, and it won’t resolve cleanly in March given the fuel and TSA pressures already in the pipeline.

The next set of figures will matter. They’ll show whether Ontario can sustain a 6.4% pace, whether LAX strings together a third positive month, and whether Burbank’s 6.5% drop was an outlier or the start of something harder to shake.