The sluggish economy, coupled with airline capacity cutbacks, continued to impact passenger traffic at Denver International Airport in May. The airport Wednesday reported 4,192,174 passengers used the facility in May, a 5.8 percent decline from the 4,450,742 travelers recorded in the same month last year.

Even with the decline, it was DIA’s third-busiest May since opening for business in February 1995.

Through May, the airport’s year-to-date passenger count rose to 19,628,746.  That was down 1,092,645, or 5.3 percent, from the 20,721,391 travelers recorded at the facility during the first five months of 2008.

The continued effect of airline capacity reductions also was reflected in the number of flight operations at DIA in May.  Operations that month totaled 50,574, down 6.2 percent from May of last year.  For the year, DIA’s operations totaled 249,196, a decline of 4.3 percent from the same period in 2008.