Air travel through a South Coast airport is going through the roof.
Santa Barbara Airport had a 27% spike in passengers using the airport in 2019 compared to 2018.
The airport had just under a million passengers; 998,691 to be exact.
Santa Barbara Airport officials say it would have broken the million mark for the first time had it not been for an accident at the airport last summer. No one was hurt in the crash landing of a C-130 transport plane on August 25th, but the airport's main runway was closed for 18 hours, which resulted in the cancellation of a number of flights. The missed flights would have covered the 1300 passengers needed to reach the million mark.
The next closest year for passenger traffic at the airport was 2006, with 865,000 passengers.