As thousands of airlines employees across the nation face time away from work, the director of the Gen. Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport does not expect cutbacks to land there.
Gene Olson notes the flight schedules for October and November look largely the same as they did in August and September.
“Those flights require people to check people in, handle baggage, marshal the airplanes, all that kind of stuff,” said Olson. “So, we’ve not heard about any kind of significant numbers of layoffs trickling down to the small airport level.”
United Airlines and American Airlines started to furlough 32,000 workers Thursday after the federal government failed to reach an agreement on a COVID-19 relief package with aid for the airline industry.
“I’m not sure if the reductions would make it this far down or not,” said Olson. “But I suspect that if they made significant layoffs at airports of our size, then they would start cutting flights – and we have not seen those kinds of cuts.”
Olson said many of the workers at PIA are not direct employees of the airlines, as United, American and Delta operate through ground handling companies. He noted the Metropolitan Airport Authority would not be able to prevent or offset any potential airline staff reductions.
“We’re basically the landlord. We own the building and we own the runways and taxiways,” he said. “But we don’t have any hand [in] operating the flights. So there’s not much that we as the airport authority could do to counter any kind of layoffs or changes.”
Olson said the pandemic derailed what started as a promising year, with the airport having record months in January and February – followed by less than 3,000 passengers in April. He said 26,500 passengers came through the airport in July and almost 22,700 in August.
“We saw a little bit come back in June,” he said. “July was a little bit down from June, and August was a little bit down from there, but August is normally down from July. But our percentage from normal was still going up.”
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