MCALLEN, Texas - McAllen International Airport continues to capture the biggest share of the passenger market in the Rio Grande Valley, the city’s director of aviation reports.
Jeremy Santoscoy gave an update on airport activity at a recent McAllen Economic Development Corporation stakeholders meeting.
“Through Quarter 3, we are at about 863,000 total passengers, which is a slight decrease year-over-year, (a drop of) about two and a half percent,” Santoscoy said.
“We continue to see the majority market share; the value is about 48 percent, with Harlingen following at 40 percent and Brownsville at 12 percent.”
Harlingen is otherwise known as Valley International Airport. Brownsville is otherwise known as Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport.
“Overall, year-over-year, Harlingen was up just slightly, but Brownsville was still down 11 percent. With all the economic activity over there, you figured there'd be some kind of change. But what I'm hearing is there are still a lot of people choosing to live on this side of the Valley and commute back and forth with those jobs down there, with the SpaceX and LNG.”
Santoscoy said the recent government shutdown did not impact McAllen International Airport very much.
“The government shutdown, the longest government shutdown, had did very little to no effect on McAllen International Airport. Our services kept going,” Santoscoy said. “We have good group of federal partners that we continue to work with through thick and thin. So services did not see any delays when they did turn down the amount of operations working out of the hubs. We did see a couple of them cancelations, but that was the airline's decision.”
Santoscoy said McAllen is continuing to lobby to have its flights to Mexico City restored. They were recently suspended by the federal government.
“We were disappointed with that, with the Mexico City flights being suspended. We continue to work with our congressional delegation to make some noise in D.C. to see how they can support us; to open that route back up due to its importance to the Valley. It's the only Mexico City route out of here.”
Santoscoy said he had read that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum wants to open up more slots out of Mexico City. “We're trying to look at the validity of that. No orders have been issued by the Mexican government,” he said. “That route is very important to the economy down here.”
Santoscoy was asked about expansion plans for McAllen International Airport.
“We continue to work on the expansion. Last year, we did our capacity study. We brought in the EDC (McAllen Economic Development Corporation), and other stakeholders, such as the (McAllen) Chamber (of Commerce), our advisory board, and the City Commission.”
Santoscoy said airport leaders have moved to the next step of the design process.
“We are working through the design process right now to try to prioritize, to see what we can afford. To look at all the different variables with the expansion. The total expansion with a ten-year build out, that takes us to about 2040. It adds about four gates, adds about 90,000 square feet of new space, and renovates about 70,000 square feet. So, we continue to work on that.”
Santoscoy said the City of McAllen has acquired about ten acres along 10th Street to continue its general aviation development. “We're working on that and we're opening bids, actually today, for some more parking.”
