A total of 5,109,342 passengers were recorded at Denver International Airport in July, a 2.2 percent increase from the 5,000,505 travelers who used the airport during the same month last year. This marks DIA’s busiest month in history and bucks the trend of declining passenger numbers that started last fall. This is only the second time in history that monthly traffic at DIA has topped the 5 million mark.

“This is certainly good news for Denver International Airport,” Aviation Manager Kim Day said Tuesday. “We’ve been seeing our numbers drop since last October and it is refreshing to see them headed in a different direction. Although we still anticipate finishing 2009 down overall, I think that this is an encouraging sign and certainly a reflection on how strong the Denver air travel market really is.”

July 2008 was previously the busiest month on record at DIA. For the first seven months of the year, passenger traffic at DIA totaled 29,446,896. That was down 3.6 percent from the 30,551,725 passengers recorded in the first seven months of 2008.  DIA’s all-time record of 51.2 million passengers was set last year.

Flight operations in July totaled 55,578, a decline of only 1.7 percent from the same month last year. For the first seven months of this year, DIA’s operations totaled 358,104, down 3.6 percent from the comparable period of 2008.