Huntsville International Airport projects losing at least $7 million during coronavirus outbreak

Huntsville International Airport projects losing at least $7 million during coronavirus outbreak

Air as soon as it gets started.

Our team coverage picks up now at the huntsville airport.

In just the last two hours - the airport announced it - along with airports nationwide have requested 10- billion dollars in emergency funding.

It's to help combat the impact of the coronavirus.

Waay 31's ashley carter joins us live ... where representatives say they are expecting to lose millions of dollars in revenue due to the pandemic.

The spokeswoman for huntsville international airport told me the are projecting that this airport will lose between seven to ten million dollars in revenue - and that's only if the coronavirus pandemic lasts for three months!

In just a week parking numbers at the airport went from only being down 30-percent from usual - to now 86-percent.

The spokeswoman says it's because the need to travel dropped.

On top of that - some businesses placed travel restrictions on employees and large conferences are getting cancelled.

The only thing she could compare this type of loss of revenue to was 9-11 - when airports had to close for a couple of days... but with no timeline for when the coronavirus outbreak will be contained - airport staff isn't sure when the airport will fully recover when 9-11 happened, to get us back to pre 9-11 numbers it was 2004 before we were back to those numbers, so we don't know with this how long it will last number one and then when it's over it's not over for us.

It takes time to build back up and we don't know when we'll be back to pre-covid 19 numbers."

The spokeswoman did say the airport has changed some of its operational procedures and placed some budget restrictions in order to meet the three top priorities.

Those are safety of the passengers and employees, being able to continue to operate for the community, and avoiding lay-offs.

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