It’s official: 2016 was the busiest year in Denver International Airport history.
Nearly 58.3 million travelers passed through the airport in 2016, soaring by the previous passenger traffic record, set just one year earlier, by more than 4 million people, the airport announced Friday.
“Denver International Airport has now seen three consecutive years of impressive record-setting passenger growth, driven by strong demand for travel to and from Denver, large increases in airline capacity and our efforts to secure new airlines and destinations around the world,” airport CEO Kim Day said in a statement. “In 2016, we welcomed five new airlines – Allegiant, Elite Airways, PenAir, Sun Country Airlines and Virgin America – and added a dozen new destinations to our growing portfolio.”
The exact 2016 count: 58,266,515 passengers. That’s an increase of 7.9 percent over 2015, when the airport saw 54,014,502 travelers.
DIA also smashed the previous record book for its single busiest days in airport history.
Of the top 10 busiest days ever, all occurred in 2016, the airport said. Nine of them were in July, while the new No. 1 was Nov. 27, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when 188,486 passengers traveled through the airport.
And the record streak actually goes much further — in 2016, DIA notched its top 36 busiest days, airport spokesman Heath Montgomery said.
The airport ended the year strong, too, with December marking the 16th consecutive month of record-setting passenger traffic. A total of 4.8 million passengers passed through the airport in December, the airport said.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. Early in the year, reports of lengthy security lines led to worries that checkpoints would be all but strangled by the busy summer travel season.
But wait times dropped at DIA and nationwide after TSA increased staffing and improved communications with airline and airport officials. DIA also deployed contract workers to assist TSA agents with non-security tasks, including bin management, during the summer and holiday travel seasons.
New destinations added at DIA in 2016: Buffalo, N.Y.; Charleston, S.C.; Moab and Vernal, Utah; Monterrey, Mexico; Montreal, Canada; Munich, Germany; Norfolk and Richmond, Va.; Page, Ariz.; Salina, Kan.; and Telluride.
