Myrtle Beach airport has record-breaking summer amid travel boom, long security lines
This summer, Myrtle Beach International Airport saw more passengers than it, or any airport in the state, had ever seen before.
The airport announced this week that it set a record for traffic with more than half a million passengers in July, the highest in history in South Carolina and the second month in a row that the airport had set such a record.
Total passenger traffic was 547,933 last month, a nearly 50% increase from July 2019.
In a press release, Director of Airports Scott Van Moppes called the record an “incredible win” for the airport.
For many passengers going through the airport, the crowds created by this record-breaking traffic might not have felt like a win.
The travel influx, as airlines added hundreds of flights this summer, has created security lines that stretch the length of the airport, strained food services and rental cars, and left many people so frustrated they are considering never flying here again.
In the last two months, the airport has also seen dozens of flights canceled. Many of the canceled flights were on Spirit, the largest carrier at the airport, leaving a disproportion amount of travelers through the airport stranded compared to other cities as the airline dealt with nationwide problems for nearly two weeks. In the first half of the year, Spirit carried nearly half of the Myrtle Beach airport’s passengers.
Moppes, who the airport has repeatedly refused to make an available for an interview, said in a statement the record-breaking crowds show that MYR is a “first-class facility and more and more people are taking note.”
The airport’s rapid expansion this year has showed a need for the airport to match its growth in flights with a growth in the size of its terminal and its security checkpoint. But the airport has not said what, if anything will change. TSA has made some changes to speed up processing of travelers, but little else has changed in the last few months.
A nonbinding master plan for expansion is expected to come out as soon as this fall, but many of the changes would be years away.
This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 3:21 PM.
