Boise Air Travel By The Numbers

Molly Messick / StateImpact Idaho

A passenger checked in at the Boise Airport early this week.

For the last week, StateImpact Idaho has been reporting on recent cuts to flights in and out of Boise.  The guiding question: will airlines’ cutbacks affect Idaho’s prospects for an economic turnaround?

Airlines are, of course, responding to broader economic conditions when they determine to stop offering a flight between, say, Boise and Los Angeles.  They’re considering the cost of fuel and the demand for service.  The chart below gives a sense of just how that demand for flights in and out of Boise has changed over the last decade.  Not surprisingly, many routes saw a substantial increase in ridership between 2000 and 2007.

It’s the declines since that time that are particularly telling.  The number of passengers flying between Boise and Los Angeles has fallen by 48 percent.  Between Boise and San Jose, 44 percent.  Between Boise and Spokane, 38 percent.  The numbers confirm what Boise Airport’s Bryant Francis recently told me about the recession’s effects on travel in and out of Boise.  “It set us back about ten years in terms of our annual passenger traffic,” he said.

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