Another year, another new record for passengers flying out of the Tri-Cities Airport, though it is expected to fall short of the 500,000 people airport officials had hoped for.

While data on the number of December enplanements – people boarding departing flights from the Pasco airport – will not be available until mid-January, airport director Buck Taft told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business he does not think 2025’s total will end up reaching the half-million mark.

“If I am guessing, we will be at 480,000 to 490,000,” he said.

Even the low end of that range would mean a couple thousand additional people flew out of the Tri-Cities in 2025 compared to the year before when 478,016 enplanements were recorded. 

There were high hopes the Tri-Cities Airport would see 500,000 departing passengers in 2025 after years of booming air travel since the Covid-19 pandemic. The first three months of the year fed into that optimism, when the airport recorded 11% more, or roughly 11,000, passengers compared to that same period in 2024.

The following months saw more modest increases. Then September brought the first decline in passenger numbers compared to the same month in the prior year for the first time in years. 

In the end, from September through November, the Pasco airport had about 3,000 fewer people leaving from its gates compared to the same period in 2024.

Taft told Port of Pasco commissioners at one of its public meetings in September he anticipated passenger traffic would slow. He attributed the decline to the region’s federal agencies and contractors limiting expenses in response to uncertainty around the federal budget and the then-possible government shutdown.

Those comments came before the FAA began limiting air traffic due to the government shutdown. The Pasco airport was not on the list of 40 airports that would see the reductions, but nine of the 10 airports that have routes in and out of the Tri-Cities were. Only Phoenix-Mesa airport served by Allegiant had no anticipated reductions in flights.