The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has released the 2011 passenger statistics for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. Together, Washington’s airports served more than 42 million passengers last year.

“Even during these challenging times for the aviation industry, we are very pleased that in 2011 we were able to not only continue to provide excellent air service for the region but also to attract new airlines and  service ,” said Jack Potter, Airports Authority President and CEO. “We will continue to work to keep the Washington region one of the stronger air service markets in the country for both passengers and cargo.”

Reagan National served 18.8 million passengers in 2011, a nearly 4 percent increase over 2010 and ahead of the national average growth of 1.5% last year.

Dulles International served 23.2 million passengers in 2011—continuing to serve the highest number of passengers among the three area airports. This was a 1.6% dip from the previous year, however, on the international front, international and transborder air passenger numbers increased 1.6% to 6.5 million. International traffic at Dulles has risen every year since 2003 and the Airports Authority has recently expanded the International Arrivals Building as a result of this growth.

In 2011, Icelandair began non-stop service to Reykjavik and Turkish Airlines increased its number of flights to Istanbul. Announcements already made for new or increased service this year include:

At Dulles: Daily service on United to Doha begins in May and the first non-stop service in the region to Hawaii with daily service to Honolulu begins in June. United will also add new daily service to Manchester, UK in May and Dublin, Ireland in June. A new airline, Porter Airlines, begins daily service to Toronto in April.

At Reagan National: The recent exchange of flights between Delta Airlines and US Airways will bring new and expanded service on US Airways to Birmingham; Fayetteville, Islip, Little Rock; Jacksonville, Pensacola, Tallahassee, Ft. Walton Beach, Cincinnati, Des Moines, Memphis, Omaha, Bangor, Savannah, Hartford and Ottawa, Canada. JetBlue will increase service to its existing destinations and provide new daily service to Tampa.

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