Montego Bay Sangster International Airport processed just 0.9 percent fewer passengers in October this year, with 257,600 passing through Jamaica’s largest airport compared with 259,800 in 2025, the month Hurricane Melissa hit the western end of the country and severely disrupted the tourism sector.
It is unclear what impact the reduction in room count, arising from the closure of a number of hotels since November last year, is playing in the reduced visitor traffic.
While the numbers reflect stability, they are far less than the 319,200 commuters that passed through Montego Bay in October 2024. The 2026 outturn reflects a fall of 19.3 percent, compared with 2025, slightly worse than the decline in September of 17.6 percent. For the ten months to October this year, Sangster processed 23.9 percent less passengers than for 2025 with 3,124,500 versus 4,107,100 in 2025.
Kingston, Norman Manley Airport processed 3.8 percent more passengers this year October with 126,700 that passed through, up from 122,000 in October 2025. Year to date movements slipped 1.3 percent 1,511,400 from 1,531,800 in 2025. Last year, October, Kingston Norman Manley Airport handled 13.0 percent fewer passengers compared to the previous year, with 121,500 in 2025 vs 139,600 in 2024.
The data was extracted from the website of Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, S.A.B. de C.V., operator of both airports.
According to the company, preliminary data of terminal passenger traffic showed a 7.7 percent decline for March 2025, resulting in 40,000 fewer incoming and outgoing passengers, with 482,600 passengers passing through the airport, compared with 522,800 in March 2024. The much smaller Norman Manley International Airport had a 7.7 percent increase of 10,000 passengers to 139,200 from 129,300 in 2023.
Sangster International accounted for 456,200, down from 491,900 last year, for a decline of 35,700 or around 18,000 visitors. Montego Bay would have seen a drop with Bascobel being serviced by daily flights out of Miami that would still not be a major factor in the decline.
For the capital city of Kingston, traffic passing through the Norman Manley airport rose a solid 8.5 percent to 139,600 from 128,700 in October 2023 and for the year to date a decline of 0.2 percent from 1,467,600 to 1,464,500 in October, this year. experienced a year to date decline by 2.2 percent from 4,313,200 passenger traffic in October 2023 to 4,216,400 with just two more months left in the year, data from Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico operators of the two major international airports in Jamaica reveal in their preliminary data release.
The data while not the exact outcome of stopover tourist arrivals to the country, provides a good indication of tourist traffic flows into the country.
The data also indicates that arrivals for the 2023 first quarter could result in stopover arrivals to the country rising a solid 45 percent to 742 thousand versus 510 thousand for the same period in 2022 and 5 percent above 2019.