Charleston International Airport handled 531,978 passengers in September, a record for the month and a 5% increase from September 2025, The Post and Courier reported Oct. 30.
September is usually a time when visitor counts slow down, CEO Elliott Summey told the Charleston Regional Aviation Authority board at its Oct. 15 meeting, according to the newspaper.
“That tells me that things are strong, not just from the hospitality standpoint, but from an economic development standpoint,” Summey said.
The September jump followed a mostly flat summer. Passenger counts fell 0.9% in June from a year earlier, then rose 3.3% in July and 0.5% in August, to 551,983, according to the airport’s monthly operations reports.
Summey told the board the airport is seeing growth from legacy carriers and from budget airlines such as Breeze Airways and Southwest Airlines, according to The Post and Courier.
“It’s another example of where we’re headed and we’re doing that without any new gates yet,” Summey said.
The airport’s $100 million Concourse C West Gate expansion is expected to open early next year, The Post and Courier reported. Summey said the airport has purposely held back on a major push for new air service, and officials expect a “reinvigoration” of route development, with more frequencies and new nonstop destinations, once the concourse opens, the newspaper reported.
Two new routes are already on the calendar. Breeze will start flying twice weekly to Buffalo, N.Y., on July 2, 2027, the airport announced Oct. 13. United Airlines will start nonstop flights to San Francisco on March 28, 2027, the airport announced Oct. 22.
The airport averages about 6.3 million passengers a year, according to The Post and Courier. In September, J.D. Power ranked it first among medium-size airports in its 2026 North America Airport Satisfaction Study, according to a Fox Television Stations report on the results.
