Denver International Airport recorded 4,101,004 passengers in October, a 1.3 percent decline from the 4,154,517 travelers who passed through the facility in the same month last year. Despite the small monthly drop, it was the third-busiest October ever at the Denver airport.

“We continue to be encouraged by the relatively small decline in our traffic,” Aviation Manager Kim Day said Friday. “Because of the sagging economy and the resulting cuts in airline capacity, we had expected we’d see a 2 to 2.5 percent drop in passengers from last year. And that’s where it looks like we will end 2009.”

Year to date through October, passenger traffic at DIA totaled 42,436,235.  That was down 2.4 percent from the 43,492,803 travelers who used the facility during the same period of 2008.

DIA handled 49,952 flight operations in October, a decline of 1.0 percent from the same month of last year. For the first 10 months of 2009, DIA’s operations totaled 512,545, 2.8 percent below the 527,163 operations recorded in the same period of last year.