San Francisco Worldwide Airport retains eye on restoration | Native Information
Despite the global pandemic crippling the travel industry and suddenly disrupting operations at the San Francisco International Airport, a top official at the gateway to the Bay Area shared measured optimism that conditions could improve.
Airport director Ivar Satero explained how the health crisis was affecting business at the airport during a South San Francisco city council meeting on Wednesday March 25.
Passenger traffic fell 98% in the immediate aftermath of the coronavirus spread and is currently about 71% lower than normal, said Satero, who expected tourist traffic to increase later in the year as health conditions permit.
“I’m hopeful. I know there is a pent-up demand for travel so I expect a pretty good bump in the next six months,” Satero said.
He balanced that expectation against the realization that vaccine availability and possible virus mutations could determine when and if people can fly again.
More questions about how sustainable the anticipated surge is remain, and the numbers Satero offers suggest that the airport may not regain its full scale of lost travelers until around 2025.
To that end, the airport accepted around 58 million passengers in 2019, and charts that track growth models show that these numbers may not return to high for a few years.
One factor contributing to the slow recovery is that while the leisure travel industry is set to surge soon, the return of business travel is likely to gradually return to pre-pandemic levels, Satero said.
He said travel professionals have some historical precedents to refer to when forecasting a recovery, noting that it took the travel industry nearly 10 years to recover after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“We are working a lot to understand what our future looks like,” he said.
According to Satero, who said revenue was down 23% from normal, the reduction in the number of trips made also reflected in the airport’s bottom line.
The loss of income will be offset by government relief, and Satero reckoned the airport could raise nearly $ 500 million in three rounds of funding, with more cash available to small businesses in the food and retail sectors.
Satero said airport officials have tried to make the most of the flexibility offered by reducing flights and are planning runway works to complete a capital improvement program.
While previous similar projects resulted in traffic jams, Satero said the next round of runway improvements shouldn’t expect flight delays.
The Mayor of South San Francisco, Mark Addiego, thanked Satero for the detailed analysis of the problems and future prospects of the airport in the past.
“What happens at SFO is really an integral part of the South San Francisco economy, so these projections are important to us as we look to our future,” he said.
On a related point during the meeting, council members agreed to return $ 784,812 of unspent money to the airport to fund a noise abatement program.
Officials said the city’s program, which aims to help residents frustrated by noise from their planes through noise control, has lost momentum in recent years.
And after funding an early spike in applications, officials from South San Francisco said the money originally paid by the airport should be returned to a larger fund that will be used by the airport to make a similar program possible.
“We want to continue to work with the airport and hand over the administration and the remaining funds,” said Christina Fernandez, assistant to the city manager.
In other business areas, officials also agreed to work with representatives from San Mateo County to open the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Center.
Approximately $ 2 million in city grants and $ 200,000 in county dues will go towards building a new center in downtown South San Francisco that will provide funding for small business owners and eventually local residents.
