Leaders and employees with the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport Foundation and the Metropolitan Airports Commission gathered Thursday in Minneapolis for "The State of the Airport", looking back on their achievements in the past year.
MSP has made some significant progress as they to continue to recover from the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. Metropolitan Airports Commission Chair Rick King says their recent accolades speak for themselves.
"Cirium for on-time performance, internationally number one airport, ACI number one airport in our size, and just recently JD Power's number one airport in all the seven categories they have," King says, rattling off numerous national and international recognition.
The JD Power ranking King references is based on customer satisfaction. MSP ranks highest among what they classify as "mega airports". MSP ranked much higher than second place Detroit and third place Phoenix speaking to the high standards MSP is setting.
MSP served 34.7 million total passengers in 2023, closing in on its all-time record of 39.5 million passengers in 2019.
The event on Thursday brought together 600 local business leaders to discuss MSP's comeback.
Executive Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Airports Commission Brian Ryks says 2024 took MSP to new heights.
"With 19 airlines and 163 destinations, the most in five years, we're honored to be Delta's second largest hub," says Ryks. "And we're pleased Delta grew domestic seats 7% this summer operating 345 peak day flights to 142 destinations."
Ryks says Terminal Two, the smaller of MSP's terminals, also set an all-time monthly record in March serving more than 711,000 passengers.