A record number of passengers passed through Bob Hope Airport in 2006, airport officials announced. With 5.7 million passengers, the Burbank airfield had an increase of 3.2 percent in passengers from last year. This was the second year in a row Bob Hope counted it highest passenger total, said airport spokesman Victor Gill. The big variable was a full year of service by low-cost air carrier JetBlue Airways, which began operating from Bob Hope to New York in mid-2005. “We already started off with a big jump that hadn’t been there in early 2005,” Gill said. JetBlue served nearly 472,000 passengers at the airport in 2006, more than double the 227,713 served in 2005. The later half of the year, however, experienced a flattening out in passenger numbers, Gill pointed out. Delta Airlines stopped its daily flights to Atlanta; and JetBlue cut back its New York flights from five to four, and stopped an Orlando flight after less than six months. “The additions to the schedule were starting to fade a bit,” Gill said. Southwest Airlines continues as the dominant carrier at Bob Hope. The airline saw a minimal increase in passengers served in Burbank over 2005.
