Sea-Tac Airport sees travel at levels ‘even stronger’ than pre-pandemic

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) is predicting another record-breaking year in 2025.

According to a news release from the airport Tuesday, last year broke pre-pandemic marks. However, SEA noted there is still much work to do in expanding the facility and improving the travel experience.

“SEA Airport is one of the economic engines of the region, and the numbers show we’re back to where we were before the pandemic and even stronger,” Lance Lyttle, SEA Airport Managing Director, stated in the release. “The investments we’ve made and continue to make at SEA are vital to improving the customer experience. We appreciate the patience of our travelers, plus all of the hard work and efforts from Port staff and airport stakeholders to reach this point and continue getting better.”

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According to airport spokesperson Perry Cooper, the airport had around 52.6 million passengers in 2024, which is above 51.8 million in 2019.

“We actually had nine years in a row of record numbers before the pandemic so it’s kind of like the downturn was just a little bit of a bump on the road, here our reaching continues to grow and we’re expecting to get higher again next year in 2025,” Cooper explained to KIRO Newsradio Tuesday.

Therefore, he is expecting the number of passengers at SEA to continue growing in 2025 — specifically, by about a 3% jump.

“Looking to go over 53.5 million passengers at this point is our expectation, so that’s again gonna be above 2019 levels and really it’s highlighting how we are continuing to grow in our plans for what we have with upgrade SEA to improve,” Cooper shared. ‘The passenger experience is really necessary so we were looking ahead and knew these projects were gonna happen and knew these numbers were gonna continue to happen and we needed to find ways in which to improve the experience.”

Sea-Tac Airport working on several projects

He said Sea-Tac Airport has some major projects coming up ahead of the 2026 World Cup. One is opening up a new checkpoint on the lower level by spring. Also, opening up the first part of checkpoint 5 that’s being redone, which will fully open at the end of the year. Cooper also said Sea-Tac Airport is in the midst of its C concourse expansion, which includes adding four new floors.

Hopefully, the renovations will allow the airport to keep up with the influx of travelers expected.

“We are a small footprint and we’ve gotta figure out ways and wish to make it a better customer experience because we can’t expand outside of our footprint right now,” Cooper explained. “But we are looking for the future as we’re in the middle of the environmental process for our sustainable airport master plan that’s calling for a second terminal to the north plus 19 new gates, so we’re in the middle of the environmental review process for that now but that’s years in the future for us to even to get to that point, so right now the upgrade SEA programs are trying to manage a better experience for travelers that are happening right now.”

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According to the news release, SEA had its busiest day on Aug. 18, 2024, when 75,410 outbound travelers passed through security checkpoints — which is an estimated 198,000 passengers going through the airport overall.

Nine of the top 10 days TSA checkpoints saw the most passengers in SEA history happened in 2024, with the outlier being in July 2023, the weekend of the Taylor Swift concerts in Seattle, officials reported.

The news release also noted overall domestic traffic was 0.1% higher in 2024 compared to 2019 but international traffic was 15% higher in 2024. Outbound travel to Europe in 2024 was 27% above 2019. However, Mexico travel saw the largest jump with travel up 101% compared to 2019.

Julia Dallas is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read her stories here. Follow Julia on X here and email her here.