Bigger planes and a busy tourism season helped the Portland International Jetport set summer passenger records and rebound from its below-average performance last winter.

A record number of passengers traveled through the airport in May and June, and passenger counts in July were the second-best on record, according statistics tracked by the airport.

Year to date, 944,906 passengers traveled through the airport, a 2.3 percent increase over the same period last year. While passenger counts in 2015 won’t exceed the previous record of 1.8 million passengers set in 2008, the jetport could set a record next year if the trend holds, said Paul Bradbury, the airport’s general manager.

Traffic counts are generally seen as an indicator of the health of Maine’s tourism industry. Also, the city owns the airport and generates income by leasing space to the airlines, retailers, vendors and other concerns operating there. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014, those leases brought in more than $15 million in income, according to the jetport’s annual report.

Many airlines introduced larger aircraft with more seats this summer, and that investment is paying off because almost all of the seats are being purchased by passengers, Bradbury said. Maine’s growth as a tourism destination also is boosting the jetport’s numbers, he said. In the summer, about 30 percent of the passengers are Maine residents and 70 percent are from outside the state.

“We are proving to be a very solid market,” he said.

Bradbury said the airlines increased their capacity because more people are flying, and planes are often filled, particularly in the summer.

In June, for example, the airlines increased the number of seats serving the jetport by 9.7 percent, and the number of passengers boarding planes increased by 9.3 percent.

Airports track passenger volume using data for “enplanements,” the industry term for the number of passengers boarding aircraft. That’s because passengers boarding planes spend more money at airports than those disembarking. Numbers since May have been impressive:

• In May, 71,113 passengers boarded at the jetport, beating the previous record of 68,930 passengers set in May 2008.

• In June, 82,041 passengers boarded, beating the previous record, 80,279 passengers, set in June 2008.

• In July, 97,206 passengers boarded, enough for second place behind the record, 98,852 passengers, set in July 2009.

Bradbury said August also was a strong month, although the data won’t be available until the end of next week.

Because the airport is usually twice as busy in the summer as in the winter, the record passenger counts this summer allowed the airport to make up the ground it lost because of severe weather last winter, when more than 80 flights were canceled.

Passenger counts were down 5.5 percent in February, down 6.1 percent in March and down 2.5 percent in April from the same months in 2014.

Five airlines service Portland with 11 nonstop destinations. Also, Southwest Airlines offers two seasonal flights: one to Chicago in the summer and another to Orlando, Florida, in the winter.

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