Puerto Vallarta Airport Loses Nearly 20 Percent of Passengers in October

Puerto Vallarta's international airport handled 354,000 passengers in October 2026, down from 441,400 in October 2025. That is a decline of 19.8 percent, according to the monthly traffic report from Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP), released on November 10.

In the same report, Tijuana, Los Cabos and Guadalajara fell 14.4, 4.6 and 1.3 percent, respectively. Puerto Vallarta had the largest decline of the four. The Mexican outlet Contralínea called it one of the airport's worst drops of the year and said high season got off to a very weak start.

GAP's breakdown shows the decline is not limited to foreign travelers. Domestic passengers totaled 196,500, against 243,800 in October 2025, a fall of 19.4 percent. Subtracting that figure from the total, international traffic would have gone from roughly 197,600 to roughly 157,500 passengers. That is our own calculation and does not appear in the release. For January through October, the airport has handled 4.89 million passengers, 12.9 percent fewer than the 5.62 million in the same period of 2025. Cumulative domestic traffic is down 5.2 percent. One caution: Contralínea attributes that 5.2 percent to October alone, but GAP's table places it in the year-to-date column.

October also had an unusual factor. GAP said the airport would stay closed until 8 a.m. on Tuesday, October 13, because of the slow movement of Hurricane Simon, and later announced that commercial flights would resume that same day. The reports we reviewed do not say how much of the drop comes from the storm, so its effect cannot be separated from any deeper weakness. November figures are not yet available.

For anyone buying or already owning in the Bay, the number matters for vacation rentals. Air arrivals are one of the quickest indicators of how many visitors a destination will see in the months ahead, and October marks the start of the season that carries the most weight in a rental condo's annual income. On November 12, Vallarta Daily published an analysis of whether a condo can cover its costs at an estimated 36 percent vacation rental occupancy, a sign that the break-even question is already on owners' minds.

One month with a hurricane does not make a trend, but a year-to-date figure nearly 13 percent below 2025 is a data point that an investment-minded buyer should build into the numbers. Anyone projecting rental income for this season would do well to use conservative occupancy scenarios and to check GAP's November and December reports, which come out in the first days of each following month, before committing to a mortgage or a down payment.