Passenger count ticks up at Bob Hope Airport

The number of passengers traveling through Bob Hope Airport increased in November compared with the same month a year earlier.

It was the second straight month of passenger gains.

The 3.7% hike was reported Tuesday during a Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority meeting. It follows a similar increase of more than 3.6% in October. Passenger numbers hit a plateau in September and August but increased for six months before that.

There were 337,572 passengers in November compared with 325,515 in November 2014, surpassing airport projections by more than 4,500 passengers.

“November was a good month,” said Mark Hardyment, the airport’s director of government and environmental affairs.

For the first 11 months of the year, there were more than 3.6 million passengers compared with roughly 3.5 million passengers during the first 11 months of last year — a more than 2.2% increase.

Leading the increase were Southwest Airlines, up more than 5,700 passengers, and Alaska Airlines, up roughly 2,300 passengers.

Both showed “very positive operations” compared with November 2014, Hardyment said, but the monthly numbers reflected generally positive results “across the board.”

United went up about 17.4%, or nearly 2,900 passengers, and SeaPort Airlines, the airfield’s smallest carrier, more than doubled its counts to 590 passengers. American Airlines notched a gain of 3.7%, or more than 620 passengers, compared to November 2014.

However, passenger numbers stayed relatively flat for Delta Air Lines, down just 0.2%, and dropped slightly for JetBlue Airways, slipping about 1.7%.

Most other airports in the region also reported November increases: John Wayne Airport, 14.3%; Los Angeles International Airport, 11.3%; and Ontario International Airport, 3.9%.

Long Beach Airport reported a 3.1% decline.

Bob Hope Airport’s parking revenues increased nearly 2.2% in November, or $1.65 million, compared with $1.62 million in November 2014. The results surpassed projections by more than $106,000.

The number of drivers using parking facilities increased 16.6%.

In November, with one month left in the calendar year, the airport had paid more than $1.9 million in parking taxes to Burbank’s General Fund, Hardyment said.

“We’ll probably poke our heads over the $2 million mark [for the year],” he said.

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland