QCOSTARICA – Domestic flights at the Juan Santamaría SJO Domestic Termina are experiencing a tepid recovery, after the forced pause caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Passenger traffic at the “domestic terminal” is 42% for the first almost three complete months of this year, compared to what was in the same period last year, before the pandemic.
So far in 2021, AERIS registers more than 22 thousand passengers using the terminal shared by two domestic airlines, Sansa and Costa Rica Green Airways, which operate flights to 13 destinations across the country.
“The upturn in activity determines the available offer of airlines and their scheduled flights so that the operators together with AERIS stimulate traffic and little by little we recover the good numbers of the main airport in the country,” said Erick Barboza, commercial director by AERIS.
The domestic operation in the AIJS was partially resumed on December 2020 and fully resumed as of February of this year.
The Q sent an email to Aeris (no reply received at the time of publication) if the numbers include passengers on private flights.
In the past, and prior to the construction of the new terminal, passengers coming in on private flights were processed through the main terminal.
According to the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) – tourism board – the new SJO Domestic Terminal can move over 200,000 passengers per year on regular and private flights, which represents a total of around 20,000 operations.
