The Abridged version:
- Sacramento International Airport’s passenger growth rate over the past decade surpassed that of all other major California airports, nearly double the second-fastest growing airport — San Diego.
- Places with beaches or popular connection hubs were among the most frequent destinations for SMF travelers.
- International destinations remain just a sliver of SMF’s traffic, but more and more passengers are catching flights to and from Mexico.
SMF is taking off.
An average of 38,000 passengers boarded or deplaned from flights at Sacramento International Airport daily in 2025, a jump of nearly 12,000 daily passengers from a decade earlier, new county data shows.
No other major airport in California can boast of passenger growth that high in the past 10 years, federal data show.
Population growth, an influx of passengers from the Bay Area and a quick recovery from pandemic lockdowns drove the increase, airport officials said.
Overall, a record 13.4 million domestic passengers and 500,000 international passengers boarded or deplaned from SMF last year, making the airport the nation’s 36th-busiest for domestic travel. In 2015, the passenger count was about 9.4 million domestic and 200,000 international, ranking 42nd for domestic travel.
Vegas, baby, Vegas!
The biggest growth in passengers was on flights to Las Vegas.
About 608,000 passengers boarded flights to Las Vegas during the 12 months ending in November, double the number boarding in 2015.
Stephen Clark, deputy director of commercial development for the Sacramento County Department of Airports, said Las Vegas remains a draw for “quick weekend travel, major events and conventions, and strong visiting-friends-and-relatives traffic. It’s also a highly competitive, low-fare market.”
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Southwest Airlines, the airline with, by far, the most passenger traffic into and out of SMF, routes many people through Vegas on their way to other places.
“Southwest uses LAS as a connecting point with as many as 260 flights a day which, allows them to connect their passengers to cities that SMF doesn’t have nonstop flights,” said Mark Davis, who manages the airport department’s air service development.
Even so, passenger traffic from SMF to Las Vegas dipped by about 90,000 passengers last year, part of a nationwide trend of fewer vacations in Vegas. Spirit Airlines and Delta Airlines recently dropped direct service from SMF to Las Vegas.
Beaches, mountains also popular
San Diego, Denver and Hawaii were the other destinations adding the most passengers from SMF in the last decade.
About 542,000 SMF passengers boarded planes headed for San Diego during the 12 months ending in November, up about 210,000 from the same period a decade ago.
Clark said the San Diego route sees business and leisure traffic year round. He said many people consider it too far away to conveniently reach by car.
Denver is also a popular vacation destination but it is increasingly an airline hub connecting passengers to flights across America, Clark said. About 515,000 SMF passengers boarded flights to Denver in the 12 months ending in November, up about 200,000 from the same period a decade ago.
Hawaii is popular for SMF travelers because it’s a medium-haul, family-friendly vacation spot, Clark said. About 319,000 SMF passengers boarded planes for Honolulu, Kahului, Kona and Lihue during the 12 months ending in November, compared to about 128,000 a decade earlier.
“We are anticipating additional flights to Hawaii once Southwest starts flying redeyes to and from the islands,” Davis added.
Some routes declined in 2025
Not all routes gained passengers over the past decade.
In 2015, the most popular flight out of SMF was to Los Angeles International Airport. Passenger traffic from SMF to LAX fell by almost 100,000 passengers during the 12 months ending in November 2025 when compared to the same period in 2015. Outbound passenger traffic to nearby Orange County and Ontario airports also collectively fell almost 100,000 passengers over the past decade.
Traffic increased by more than 115,000 passengers into Long Beach, and Southwest added a new flight to Palm Springs that drew nearly 50,000 outbound passengers last year, mostly offsetting losses in other parts of the Los Angeles area. (Traffic to Burbank, the other popular route to the LA area, grew modestly.)
“The reduction in LAX service largely reflects airline network optimization rather than demand erosion,” Clark said. He added that the growing number of direct flights from SMF to more destinations meant fewer people needed to fly to LAX for a connection.
Mexico traffic growing
Direct international travel remains a fraction of SMF’s passenger traffic — but it is growing fast.
Outbound traffic to Guadalajara, Mexico, jumped from about 81,000 in the 12 months ending in November 2015 to about 136,000 during the same period in 2025. Travel to Cabo went from almost nothing in 2015 to more than 30,000 passengers last year.
Travel to Guadalajara reflects a strong “friends-and-family” market, Clark said, adding that “the greater Sacramento region has deep cultural and economic ties to central Mexico.” Travel to Cabo, by contrast, is largely about taking vacations.
Choosing SMF over Bay Area options
Some of the passenger growth at SMF in recent years may have come at the expense of Bay Area airports.
Bay Area residents are more frequently choosing an easier trip out of SMF than fighting traffic, train schedules and overall cluster at busy San Francisco International Airport. In addition, Oakland International Airport’s traffic has declined markedly over the past decade.
“SFO can be kind of a beast,” said SMF spokesman Scott Johnston. “A lot of times, people would rather drive an hour and a half to Sacramento, park and travel from here.”
Waiting for his bags at Terminal B after arriving from Vegas in early February, Randy Sieg said he prefers SMF to many other airports because it’s easy for him to get from his car to his flight, and vice versa. Sieg works in construction, is based near Atlanta and flies to different parts of the country. He’s especially happy about parking rates at SMF — $12 per day in economy, compared to $27 a day at SFO.
“It’s a big deal, especially if we have to go back to Atlanta for a week,” he said.
Steady growth predicted
SMF traffic fell slightly in November and December 2025 amid a government shutdown that led to some flight cancellations and due to a possibly softening market nationwide, but Clark said airport officials project steady demand growth, roughly 2–3% per year moving forward, with 20 million annual passengers by 2038.
To handle increased traffic, SMF officials will soon open a new parking garage. Six more gates at Terminal B will be completed soon. Johnston said more gates at Terminal A or even a new Terminal C could be on the horizon.
Phillip Reese is a regular contributor, writing Numbers Matter for Abridged.