As Austin-Bergstrom International Airport continues to experience feeble passenger traffic, officials at the travel hub anticipate a 20% loss in revenue for the year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The airport ended 2019 with about $176.7 million in operating revenue, according to airport data. The expected 20% drop is a direct result of the coronavirus, said airport spokesman Bryce Dubee. The city will not get a final accounting of the airport’s fiscal year 2020 revenue numbers until around February or March next year.
Not only has the airport’s budget for fiscal year 2021 has been adjusted for decreased passenger traffic and revenue, but timelines for spending on improvement projects also have been changed, Dubee said.
“While the CARES Act funding acted as a buffer to the initial financial impact felt in (fiscal year 2020), more assistance will be needed in the next fiscal year if travel demand remains at its current slow trajectory and with the anticipated spike of the COVID-19 cases this fall or winter,” airport officials have said.
The city received $250 million from the federal CARES Act, with $58.7 million going toward the airport for capital, operating and debt service expenses.
Projects that are already funded, such as ongoing runway improvements, will continue, but further expansion of the airport has shifted, Dubee said.
A total of 417,037 traveled through the airport in September, which is down 70.5% compared to the same month in 2019, when officials tallied more than 1.4 million passengers who made it the airport’s busiest September ever.
September data was released last week and is the latest month of data made available by airport officials.
Usually the number of passengers going through the Austin airport drops between August and September because the summer travel season ends and school starts back up, officials said.
August this year had slightly more travelers than September with 419,475 passengers recorded.
With pandemic protocols and overall travel demand down, the airport did not see such a significant decline between August and September this year and instead saw passenger numbers continue to plateau since hitting about 406,000 in July.
The number of passengers traveling through the airport has leveled off after a massive plunge in the spring and rebounding in May, according to airport data. In April, the airport’s worst month this year, only 47,781 passengers traveled through the airport.
Traveling increased in May with 130,826 passengers, a boost in travel that came after Gov. Greg Abbott allowed many of the state’s businesses to start accommodating more customers or to reopen.
Overall annual passenger totals have dropped this year because of the pandemic, which intensified in Central Texas just before the South by Southwest festivals in March that typically produce a jump in airport traffic.
Between January and September this year, about 4.94 million passengers have been recorded at the airport, representing a 61.6% decrease compared to the same period in 2019, officials said.
The airport so far has seen fewer passengers than it did in 1999, its first year as a commercial airport when it served 6.67 million travelers.
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