With disruptions at major airports dominating the headlines, how are regional airports faring?
We talked with some local airport managers, who say there wasn’t nearly as much upheaval as we’re seeing at bigger airports
The biggest thing airport managers say affected them recently, was the winter weather last week and weekend. Dubois Regional Airport manager Bob Shaffer tells us they were closed Friday through Sunday for that reason.
“So, after the storm blew through on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, since then, we have been operational starting Monday morning, And the flights have been operating essentially on time and have not had cancellations throughout this week due to any weather issues.”
Overall, we’ve been doing well. We’ve seen an uptick in passengers in the month of December, with the holidays traffic, which is great. We have experienced some weather. We have two weather cancellations on Friday the 23rd with all the high winds and so forth.”
But where do things stand for regional airports and what does the near future hold?
Overall they say things are operating smoothly, with the exception of last week’s winter storm. This being the holiday travel season, they tell us this is an important time of year for them.
Things have been hectic for air travel lately, to say the least.
Some airport managers in our region say they’ve mostly withstood all those disruptions, aside from the winter weather.
“Occasionally we have, you know, some issues with equipment or something that might cancel a flight. You know, we had a couple ground equipment issues on Saturday the 24th, which also canceled a couple flights.”
The University Park Airport manager, Jason McMurtrie, says there have been some “minor” but not many maintenance-related delays.
“If I had a crystal ball to tell me what the weather was gonna be, sir, “I’d be happy to answer that. You know, as long as we can be open and operational, we will certainly be doing that.”
“This week we’ll finish out with some heavy loads, After this Sunday, everything will start to taper off.”
