4.4% Dip: Arrivals to US Continue to Drop in October 2025

The National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) has released new data on international air travel to and from the US for October 2025, showing a slight increase in passenger traffic, along with some declines in overseas visitation.

Overall international air passenger enplanements rose slightly, increasing 0.3 percent compared with October 2024.

Meanwhile, arrivals of non-US citizens decreased noticeably. In October 2025, 4.8 million non-US citizen air passengers entered the United States, a decline of 4.4 percent compared with the previous year, representing 88.3 percent of the 2019 benchmark.

Among this group, overseas visitor arrivals (travelers staying at least one night) totaled 3.1 million. Although this figure reached 87 percent of pre-pandemic levels and improved from 81.1 percent in September 2025, it was still 3.1 percent lower than in October 2024.

In contrast, outbound travel from the US continued to grow. US citizen air departures to foreign destinations totaled 5.7 million, a 5 percent increase from October 2024 and a 29.2 percent rise compared with October 2019.

The top air travel markets for the US in October were

• Mexico: 2.9 million passengers (up 0.8 percent year over year),
• Canada: 2.5 million (down 9.1 percent),
• the UK: 1.9 million (down 2.4 percent),
• Germany: 1.0 million (up 1.6 percent), and
• Japan: 981,000 million (up 11.1 percent).

The busiest US airports for international travel were JFK (2.9 million), LAX (1.9 million), MIA (1.8 million), SFO (1.3 million), and EWR (1.3 million).

Check out the NTTO’s report on US international air travel for September 2025, which showed a 7.7 percent drop in arrivals.

Photo by Tom Nora on Unsplash