The Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF) is setting yet another record celebrating its busiest summer to date. This year from May through August, there were nearly 892,000 thousand enplanements, or departing passengers at SDF, an almost 6% increase compared to 2023, which was the airport’s best year ever.
“SDF had another banner summer,” said Dan Mann, Executive Director of the Louisville Regional Airport Authority. “The fact that our passenger growth showed such positive gains this summer is a huge win for our market, especially as we continue conversations with our airline partners and look ahead to future growth.”
SDF also celebrated its 10 busiest days outside of departures following the Kentucky Derby during this same period spanning from late May through June to mid-July. Plus, each month set their own individual record. May 2024 saw the biggest increase with 10% more enplanements, followed by both June and August 2024 with a 6% uptick. (Enplanements are a key industry metric that measure the number of departing passengers who board an aircraft at the specific airport.)
This record summer follows last year that not only set a new passenger record, but also saw SDF as the nation’s fastest growing airport of the Top 100 airports in the continental U.S. Additionally, four of the airport’s Top 5 record years have all occurred since 2018.
“Seeing continued traffic growth in 2024 after what I can only call unprecedented growth in 2023 is a great display of how quickly demand for air travel is growing in Louisville,” added Anthony Gilmer, Vice President of Air Service Development and Strategic Marketing for the Airport Authority. “Every month this year broke last year’s monthly records, and we’re well on our way to another year of likely record traffic at SDF.”
SDF is served by eight commercial airlines – Allegiant, American, Breeze, Delta, Southwest, Spirit, Sun Country and United – with flights to more than 35 nonstop destinations around the country. Annually, the airport averages more than 140 daily passenger flights.
