The moribund numbers seen all year are giving way to a sizable bump in passengers as people throw caution to the wind and wing their way to Christmas destinations.
At Louis Armstrong International Airport, Director Kevin Dolliole says there is definitely a difference between the Christmas and Thanksgiving travel periods.
“Christmas travel period is a little bit different from the Thanksgiving travel period with or without COVID,” he says. “Christmas travel is more spread [out over the calendar] than the spikes you see at Thanksgiving.”
Still, taking the downturn in numbers into consideration, Dolliole still expects to see numbers climbing for the Holiday.
“Every period the more spread out, this Christmas of course will not be as heavy as Christmases past due to the COVID impact,” Dolliole explains. “But we will see an uptick due to the travel period.”
If there is a bright spot in the picture, it’s the boom in airfreight handled by the Airport.
“Freight has been up, Freight unlike passenger traffic has sustained an increase pretty much around the country as well as here,” Dolliole states. “So that’s been good for the market and we expect that to continue.”
One of the positives coming from the increase in freight handling is the addition of Amazon’s Prime Air to the Airport’s list of carriers.
“We expect good things from Amazon,” Dolliole says. “We expect to see more from other air cargo operators as well in this market. So that side of things has been a little bit different from what the experience has been from the passenger side of things, with regard to COVID.”
Dolliole expects the number to slowly start to rise now that a vaccine is being proliferated among the populace.
“With the Vaccine there, now being administered, now in the second half of [next] year you’ll expect to see a nice bump in traffic.”
Dolliole says numbers should return to pre-COVID standards completely by 2024.
