Mainly due to the economic crisis, foreign travel through Los Angeles International Airport ( LAX) continued to fall by a whopping 19 percent in March, it was reported on Thursday.
This was the 12th straight month of declines for the world’s sixth largest airport, the Los Angeles Times reported, quoting figures released by the Los Angeles World Airports.
The figures showed that the number of domestic and international passengers at LAX declined from 5.2 million in March 2008 to 4.6 million in March 2009, a drop of about 12.6 percent overall.
Meanwhile, the number of international travelers fell from 1.5 million to 1.2 million for the same period.
The greatest declines occurred at nearby Ontario International Airport (OIA), where the number of domestic and international passengers dropped by more than 31 percent from 607,000 in March 2008 to 417,000 in March of this year, according to figures cited by the paper.
The OIA, operated by Los Angeles World Airports, has lost almost 32 percent of its passengers for the first three months of the year, compared with the first quarter of 2008.
The sharp declines have raised questions about whether Los Angeles World Airports can proceed with a multibillion-dollar effort to modernize LAX, including the Tom Bradley International Terminal, according to the paper.