Massport - Feb 17 Traffic numbers

Today Massport released their Feb 17 numbers, for passengers and flights. The deeper analysis is on the 2 site pages

http://www.massport.com/media/427798/0217-avstats-airport-traffic-summary.pdf

http://awhitelocks.wixsite.com/newenglandaero/massportover (overall, domestic and international)

http://awhitelocks.wixsite.com/newenglandaero/massport-international (International splits by region)

The high level view is a 7.2% increase YTD over 2016, which catapults Logan to almost 5m pax in the 2 months so far. Feb was a an ok month with a 3.2% overall increase, which is decent, given the fact that 2016 had an extra day for the leap year. Logan is still benefitting of the capacity increases from last year, for example QR on the middle east segment, WS for Canada, TP for Europe, there are more of course.. That will continue until March/April time frame when WS and QR both started last year.

As a result, I expect the growth levels to slow a bit after that point, given the limited additional international flights in particular coming this year over last year due to Terminal E being somewhat maxed out (check the Terminal E analysis page for a view on how that looks in the summer)

International - breached the 400K mark in a February for the first time and up 14.4% overall, all areas were up, with Canada leading the way with a 35.5% increase, followed by Asia at 20%, and Middle East at 16%, bringing up the rear was Caribbean. Of note was Central America who increased passenger count by 15%, but on 4 less flights.. meaning capacity factors improved as a result.

Domestic - the capacity restriction shown by the US airlines showed through in Feb with an overall increase of just 1%, but a 5.4% increase YTD, this increase for Feb was actually on nearly 3% lower flights, meaning the capacity reductions look to have been justified as more people were carried on less flights.

Outlook.

I look primarily at 12 month rolling numbers as a guide to where things are heading. For right now, the 12 month rolling number is 7.58% growth, which based on current trajectory has BOS closing out the year at 39.4m approx. compared to the 36.3m that closed out 2016.

I've also done a more conservative 5% growth goal and that gets BOS to 38.4m, how this plays out, we will see over the coming months.

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