Puerto Vallarta Airport Posts Another Double-Digit Drop in September, Now Down 12.3 Percent for the Year

Puerto Vallarta's international airport handled 10.4 percent fewer passengers in September than in the same month of 2025, according to preliminary figures released on October 6 by airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP). It is the latest in a string of weak months that is now weighing on the annual total.

In September the terminal served 212.7 thousand domestic passengers, down 9.6 percent from a year earlier, and 94.5 thousand international passengers, down 12.0 percent. GAP said the decline came mainly from airlines offering fewer seats, particularly on domestic routes. Near the end of the month, Hurricane Polo partially disrupted operations at Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos.

Among the routes with the largest declines, the company named Puerto Vallarta to Tijuana and to Monterrey on the domestic side, and Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco and Phoenix on the international side. Those last two matter to buyers and owners from the United States and Canada, who often reach the area through connections like them.

The international market has taken the hardest hit this year. From January through September, the airport received 2.27 million international passengers, compared with 2.82 million in the same period of 2025, a drop of 19.4 percent. Domestic traffic is down 3.7 percent. Combined, the cumulative decline is 12.3 percent, a figure also reported by the newspaper Mural, which contrasted it with 4.2 percent growth at Guadalajara's airport over the same months. Contralínea calculated that the gap amounts to nearly 650 thousand fewer passengers than in 2025.

GAP chief executive Raúl Revuelta Musalem said on September 30 that traffic at the terminal had fallen by as much as 23 percent at its worst, with February and March the hardest-hit months after the violence in Jalisco. According to Quadratin Jalisco, he said airlines are bringing back some of the seats they had pulled and that the international high season, which starts in November around Thanksgiving, should bring the first clearer recovery. He added that the company expects to see positive numbers again starting next year, and that recent rains and hurricanes have not caused significant cancellations.

For anyone buying, selling or renting in Bahía de Banderas, these figures do not measure property prices or rents, and none of the sources links them to the real estate market. What they do show is visitor demand, which underpins vacation rental occupancy and the flow of foreign buyers who fly in to see properties. With the decline concentrated in international passengers and the recovery tied to the November season, GAP's next monthly reports will be the indicator to watch, especially October's, due in early November.