Columbia Metropolitan Airport was second in the nation on a Bloomberg list of airports that canceled flights for summer travel this year. Only Jackson, Mississippi, has cut back a higher percentage of its summer flights than initially planned in January, according to an analysis of summer flight data by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg data shows that Columbia Airport has 13.8% fewer seats than planned in January – the second-highest percentage decline in the country. According to Bloomberg, that means more than 32,000 seats will be cut from the airport’s summer flight schedule compared to what was planned in January.
But those numbers only paint part of the picture, explains Columbia Metropolitan Airport spokesperson Kim Crafton.
Columbia Airport is on track to surpass 1.38 million passengers this year, which it estimates would take until 2028 to reach that number of annual passengers, Crafton said via email. The airport reached its previous record of 1.35 million passengers in 2019, but fell during the pandemic. In 2023 it served 1.23 million passengers.
But the airport continues to be affected by a national trend of airlines cutting back flights this summer, driven in large part by United and Delta airlines, both of which operate in Columbia.
Nationally, airlines have cut more than six million seats at airports that serve at least 100,000 passengers between June and August. The South is the hardest hit; according to Bloomberg’s analysis, more than two-thirds of the canceled seats are for flights to or from southern airports.
Greenville will have 7.4% fewer seats this summer and Myrtle Beach will have 7% fewer seats this summer than previously planned, according to Bloomberg.
Delta, United and U.S. airlines operate at Columbia airport, and all of these airlines have removed flights from their summer schedules.
Nationally, Delta has cut the number of seats by 2.3 million for its June through August schedules, and United has cut 1.4 million seats, according to Bloomberg analysis. American Airlines has canceled 1 million seats for that period.
Earlier this year, United Airlines asked pilots to take May off because they simply didn’t have enough planes to meet demand, according to the Associated Press. The shortage of aircraft is partly caused by Boeing delivering fewer new aircraft, according to the AP report.
United Airlines is offering 3,164 fewer seats this summer than last summer in Columbia. But Delta is actually offering 7,488 more seats than it offered at Columbia Airport between June and August 2023.
Year over year, the airport is seeing 4,324 more available seats between these two airlines than last summer, Crafton said.
