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Eight months into 2026, passenger traffic at Puerto Vallarta’s international airport remains below last year’s pace. But the month-by-month numbers tell a recovery story more than a decline story: after bottoming out in March, Puerto Vallarta’s year-over-year traffic gap has narrowed in five of the last six months, even as the airport absorbed a second, unrelated blow when Spirit Airlines collapsed in May.
Monthly reports from airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP) show the following total passenger counts at Puerto Vallarta’s airport, compared with the same month a year earlier:
January: 731,700, up 2.6%
February: 615,400, down 5.3%
March: 576,600, down 24.4%
April: 542,600, down 17.0%
May: 440,200, down 14.4%
June: 415,400, down 18.7%
July: 484,200, down 12.1%
August: 426,900, down 10.3%
January came in ahead of 2025, before a brief security incident in late February disrupted flights for a couple of days and unsettled traveler confidence heading into spring. March, the first full month afterward, took the hardest hit: total traffic fell 24.4%, and international traffic fell 32.1% — the single worst month GAP has reported for Puerto Vallarta all year, and the clearest marker of where the recovery had to start from.
Since March, Puerto Vallarta’s year-over-year gap has closed steadily. April improved to down 17.0%. May improved further, to down 14.4%. Then June slipped back to down 18.7% — the same month Spirit Airlines’ collapse fully hit the numbers — before the recovery resumed: July improved to down 12.1%, and August improved again, to down 10.3%, the smallest year-over-year gap Puerto Vallarta has posted since before the February disruption.
Domestic traffic barely wavered through any of this, staying within roughly eight points of flat all year.
GAP’s own leadership has described the dip in similar terms.
“International leisure demand for some of our beach destinations are affected by security concerns,” GAP CEO Raul Revuelta told analysts on the company’s second-quarter earnings call, adding that the airport operator is “actively partnering with airlines and regional tourist stakeholders to rebuild route connectivity and boost travel and confidence in this area.”
Revuelta told investors the company believes “a significant portion of the headwinds affecting traffic is temporary.”
Two additional pressures hit Puerto Vallarta’s international traffic this year, and neither one stopped the overall trend from improving.
Spirit Airlines shut down entirely on May 2, ending its nonstop service to Puerto Vallarta from Los Angeles (daily), Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston (three times weekly each) on 182-seat Airbus A320-family jets. A rough estimate shows that Spirit’s Puerto Vallarta network carried somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,000 passengers a month. That shows up clearly in June’s dip, but the recovery resumed the very next month.
Separately, jet fuel prices have roughly doubled since the outbreak of the Iran war disrupted production and exports from major suppliers, according to National Public Radio. Forbes reported in late August, citing Hopper Technology Solutions data, that fuel had reached $3.75 a gallon (up 50% since February) and that fares to Mexico and Central America were running 31% higher than a year earlier industry-wide.
“When we see a jet fuel price increase this great and that has gone on for this long, airlines really can’t afford to subsidize any of that price increase for travelers,” Hopper lead economist Hayley Berg told Forbes.
Puerto Vallarta’s dip-and-recover shape is distinctive among Mexico’s beach airports. Los Cabos, also GAP-operated, posted milder, steadier declines all year — down 6.9% in July and 6.2% in August — without anything resembling March’s low point or the rebound that followed.
Cancún, operated separately by Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, fell a comparatively gradual 8.4% in July, with softer comparisons generally attributed to post-pandemic demand normalizing rather than any single event.
Manzanillo, a small GAP-operated airport on the Colima coast, was actually up 12.5% in August, though on a base of under 17,000 passengers.
GAP’s 12 Mexican airports posted combined growth of 3.9% in July. Guadalajara, Tijuana, La Paz, Aguascalientes, Hermosillo and Guanajuato/Bajío were all up in August. Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos were the only two GAP airports of any size posting declines — a sign that whatever hit hardest was concentrated in international, beach-tourism-dependent traffic, not a broader Mexican travel slowdown.
Jalisco tourism officials are framing the rest of 2026 with real confidence.
Jalisco Tourism Secretary Michelle Fridman has said the state is safer now than before, and Puerto Vallarta Tourism Board director Luis Villasenor has pointed to “strong interest from both international and domestic travellers,” calling Puerto Vallarta “one of Mexico’s most established and beloved beach destinations.” Villasenor cited new hotel investment — including a reimagined Westin Playa Vallarta and continued Marriott Bonvoy expansion — and expanded Canadian air service from Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton.
Vacation rental data presented locally by Jamie Alexander from PVRPV, shows that occupancy for July and August 2026 ran below the same months in 2025 — 22.5% versus 28.2% in July, 17.2% versus 21.8% in August. But July’s occupancy was still 2.9 percentage points above the pre-pandemic July benchmark, and average length of stay has grown substantially versus pre-pandemic norms across nearly every month measured, from 10.8 nights in October (versus 7.6 pre-pandemic) to 26.5 nights in January (versus 20.7).
Fewer bookings than last year, in other words, but stays that are longer and, on the available evidence, more valuable per visitor than before the pandemic.
Concrete capacity investments already underway point the same direction: Southwest restored daily year-round San Diego service in March and adds twice-weekly Las Vegas service in June; Porter Airlines has added daily Toronto service and a new Edmonton route; Volaris added three new domestic Mexican routes in June; and the airport’s Terminal 2 expansion, reported at 56% complete, is projected to roughly double Puerto Vallarta’s international capacity by early 2027.
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