The biggest story for Puerto Rico’s air passenger traffic isn’t its fast pace. For years now, the island has been seeing a surge in passenger traffic at its main hub in San Juan: Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport. 

That’s not new, although it is impressive. The big trend is what’s been driving all that growth. And lately, it’s something new: international traffic. 

Puerto Rico’s bread and butter has long been domestic passenger traffic from within the United States. But in the last few years, the island has seen a sizable increase in new international routes. 

That began with carriers like Iberia and its Madrid-San Juan route, but now the island regularly handles flights to and from destinations around the Americas, whether it’s Frontier’s rapid expansion of intra-Caribbean travel to destinations like Barbados and Antigua, or Avianca’s flights from Colombia. 

Indeed, last month alone Puerto Rico’s main airport saw passenger traffic of 307,396, which was a 15.6 percent increase over April 2024. For the year, international passenger traffic is up 15.2 percent at 1.275 million. 

Overall, traffic in San Juan is up 11.3 percent in the first four months of the year, following traffic of 1.1.74 million overall in April, according to data from ASUR, which manages Luis Muñoz Marin as part of a larger regional portfolio of airports that includes nine different airports in Mexico. 

Puerto Rico’s post-pandemic tourism renaissance has been buoyed by cheap, abundant air travel, and that trend is showing no signs of slowing down.