SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio International Airport hit a record number of passengers in July, with 1,032,610 flights in or out of the airport.
It’s the second time the airport has had more than 1 million passengers, edging out the previous monthly record of 1,000,172 in July 2023. Airport officials said July 2024’s numbers reflected a 3% passenger increase from July 2023.
At the same time, the city’s aviation department is already moving to expand its plans for another parking garage, going from about 500 spaces to close to 2,000. The city hopes to have the garage finished by 2027, though it still needs to be designed.
The “Ground Transportation Center” (GTC) was already included in the city’s previously green-lit Terminal Development Plan. It is meant to be both a parking garage and a way to get commercial vehicles like hotel shuttles, taxis, and ride shares out from in front of the terminals.
However, with the growing number of passengers, the city has decided it needs the GTC to be bigger than anticipated.
Director of Airports Jesus Saenz Jr. told city council members during a Wednesday budget briefing that they closed the existing garage every day this summer and that the valet service had more than 600 cars parked a day.
“It’s not just passengers here from San Antonio – they come from far away,” Saenz told reporters after the meeting. “They have to have some assurances that they’re going to have a parking space. And some want a covered parking space, not just a surface lot, because they may be leaving for 10, 14, 21 days.”
The airport is expecting close to 1.3 million additional passengers in FY 2025 than it had in FY 2023. That’s the equivalent of about 8,000 planeloads of a Boeing 737.
The original GTC was expected to cost between $62 million and $68.5 million, according to the TDP documents on the city’s website from June 2023.
Spending for the new, larger GTC is estimated at $125 million.