Bob Hope Airport sees increase in passengers

After two flat months, the number of passengers traveling through Bob Hope Airport rose in October compared to the same month a year ago.

The hike of more than 3.6% compared to October 2014, was reported Monday during a Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority meeting. It follows plateaus in September and August, but six months of increases before that.

There were 343,508 passengers this past October, compared to 331,476 in October 2014, surpassing airport projections for the month by more than 4,400 passengers.

For the first 10 months of the year, there were more than 3.27 million passengers, compared to roughly 3.20 million passengers during the first 10 months of last year, about a 2% increase.

Southwest Airlines, the airfield’s largest carrier, had an increase in October of about 5,500 passengers, or more than 2%, while Alaska Airlines saw a passenger hike of 16.5%, or roughly 5,000 passengers, compared to the same month in 2014.

United was up 15%, or about 2,500 passengers, and SeaPort Airlines, the airfield’s smallest carrier, grew from 544 passengers in October 2014 to more than 1,100 this past October.

Passenger numbers dropped for US Airways, slipping more than 3%, Delta Air Lines, down 4.9%, and JetBlue Airways, which saw an 8% fall.

Most other airports in the region also reported rises in passenger tallies for October. The number of travelers at John Wayne Airport in Orange County rose by 12.4%. There was an 8.7% gain at Los Angeles International Airport and a roughly 5.6% increase at Ontario International Airport.

However, Long Beach Airport reported that passenger numbers continued a declining trend seen for several months this year, compared to 2014, with October numbers down 7.3%.

Bob Hope Airport’s parking revenues, which had dipped in August and September, increased more than 2.5% in October. The number of drivers using parking facilities, tracked by the number of ticket stubs for paid parking versus revenue generated, was up 12.6%, compared to the prior October.

Changes in the ticket count have been positive each month since the airport began tracking that statistic earlier this year. Dan Feger, the airport’s executive director, had attributed the declines in parking revenues despite steady passenger numbers to the rise in popularity of transportation-network companies such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar.

Drivers for those services are allowed to drop off passengers at the curb at Bob Hope Airport, but they’re required to pick up customers in the short-term parking structure, where they must pay for parking while they wait — a minimum of $3 — which accounts for the rise in the number of tickets redeemed without a similar boost in parking revenue from longer-term stays.

After seeing those businesses cutting into the parking revenues, officials began work to implement a measure to streamline and regulate how the drivers pick up passengers at the airport. Officials also complained that the drivers had been picking up passengers elsewhere on airport property or blocking the roadway in the short-term parking structure while they waited to pick up passengers there.

To address the problem, airport officials plan to designate a section of the parking structure specifically for the rideshare company cars. Drivers must display signs indicating which company they work for and will face penalties if they violate airport pick-up rules, which could result in some services being barred from the airfield.

Transportation-network companies have until Monday to agree to the terms of this new arrangement, airport spokeswoman Lucy Burghdorf said last week, which is the same day the designated waiting area for the rideshare drivers is set to be in place.

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland