Samantha Artukovich avoids Los Angeles International Airport as much as she can. She’d always end up in traffic on the way there, pushing her dangerously close to her departure, and one time, missing her flight altogether. In more than a decade living in the Los Angeles area, whenever she needed to fly, she preferred Ontario International Airport (ONT), located 50 miles east of LAX.
It’s easy to criticize Los Angeles’ biggest airport. It’s constantly under construction, it lacks an easy public transportation connection (for now) and getting there is almost surely a traffic-ridden nightmare no matter where you’re traveling from. Many Angelenos, or those that fly into the Southland often, have long opted for smaller neighboring airports at almost any cost, choosing Hollywood Burbank, Long Beach or Santa Ana whenever possible. But one Southern California airport is quietly becoming an easy alternative to LAX or its neighboring options and shows no sign of slowing down after another record-breaking year in travel.
“It’s so much more hassle-free,” Artukovich told SFGATE. “The flights [at ONT] might be $50 or $100 more typically for the routes I was used to taking, but trust me, it’s worth the convenience.”
Ontario International Airport, the small San Bernardino County airport that’s very much not in Canada, has been shattering even its own growth expectations in recent years. Until September 2025, it was on a 54-month hot streak of passenger growth, steadily adding more travelers in tandem with new routes to Boise, Honolulu and cities in Mexico. It expects a record passenger volume during the holidays this year, and the momentum is only projected to continue. The Inland Empire darling is already surpassing Burbank and Long Beach, on pace to hit 7 million passengers who traveled through ONT in 2025…