Palm Springs will be the USA's 62nd-busiest airport this winter. It has jumped 14 places since pre-pandemic winter 2019 (W19). Its seats for sale are up by 16% as the recovery across the country remains at 90%.

While renowned as a winter destination, Palm Springs has grown even stronger this summer, narrowing the winter-summer gap considerably. It has broken records, but will it continue?

American adds Austin

The latest route is American from Austin. Although it isn't yet bookable or loaded in the schedules, it'll take off on November 17th and operate 1x daily utilizing Eagle's 76-seat Embraer 175s. It won't hang around: it'll reportedly run between November 17th and 29th, and then December 15th to January 9th; a real seasonal service.

It won't be the only airline on the airport pair. It'll join fellow oneworld carrier Alaska, which only inaugurated Palm Springs-Austin in November last year. It operated until May and will resume in November, up to 1x daily by 76-seat E175s. Surprisingly, it is scheduled to run throughout next summer.

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The 62nd-busiest US airport

According to the latest OAG data, Palm Springs will have 2.1 million winter seats this year, as shown in the figure later in the article. That's up by 16% over W19 and 6% over its previous peak, W18.

It will be the second winter that it has had more than two million seats. It means Palm Springs is the USA's 62nd-busiest airport, one place behind Memphis and only seven places behind Burbank.

Note Palm Springs' winter capacity is highly likely to change. Airlines may further reduce schedules to circumvent staff shortages, as they have this summer, and not all airlines have put their full winter schedule on sale. Southwest, for example, is only bookable until March 8th.

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Summer is up even more

OAG shows that Palm Springs' summer capacity has expanded even more significantly, with just under two million seats this year. That's an increase of 48% over S19, with over 630,000 added. And it's up by 22% and 349,000 over S21, its previous record.

In terms of passengers, the latest available data is from May. The airport had 233,239 passengers that month, significantly more than any other May. However, airlines added far more seats than they sold, reducing seat load factor to 78%, down from 81% in 2019.

The summer-winter gap

Palm Springs is, of course, a snowbird destination. Between 2012 and 2019, winter had 30% to 53% more capacity than summer. But for S22 and W22, that has reduced to just 10%, by far the lowest ever. Even allowing for overcapacity, the difference is stark.

Is Palm Springs becoming more year-round? Surely not given extreme summer heat: when writing at 02:00 local time, it is 91 degrees Fahrenheit (33 Celsius). It is probably simply a sign of the pandemic-driven times and the recovery. Capacity will probably reduce in the coming summers.

What do you make of it all? Let us know by commenting.