COVID-19 is having a major impact on air travel and that is posing challenges for the Greater Moncton Romeo Leblanc International Airport.
President and CEO Bernard Leblanc says one of the biggest challenges they are facing is, everything keeps changing, “What we planned for this morning could be very different this afternoon. Some of the things that we have had to address so far is what precautions to take, what to advise our customers, how do we protect our employees, how do we keep the airport open. We didn’t really feel it until last weekend.”
He says they are also dealing with fewer passengers onboard aircraft and now flight cancellations.
West Jet has cut back on flights and SunWing has cancelled all flights down South for at least the next three weeks.
Porter Airlines also announced this morning they are suspending flights until June.
Air Transat also announced today a gradual suspension of their flights until the end of April.
Thank you to our passengers, staff, visitors and business partners for their understanding and patience during this difficult time. We are all in this together. In the meantime, please follow all government directives and be kind. pic.twitter.com/XZuuhsbtYJ
— MonctonYQM (@MonctonYQM) March 18, 2020
Leblanc pointed out that COVID-19 has been very difficult for all airports, “I’m sure every airport in Canada is looking at what happens if traffic drops by five per cent, ten per cent or 40 per cent or more. The questions being asked are, what happens on the revenue side, what happens on the operations side and how do we pay the bills? A lot of us are doing a lot of re-forecasting, but guessing. Worse case is that airports are shut down and you only have emergency services, if that. I don’t know if we have seen that anywhere in the world yet, but we have seen some airlines go bankrupt while others have cut their services by 80 to 90 per cent. We may see huge changes but I think it will be a function of how the virus escalates in our region. If we take the right measures then it might not be as bad as it could have been.”
He says their main focus is to keep the airport operating.
“The uncertainty is a big challenge. Government directives could change overnight. The Airlines approach could change as well, so some of it we are planning for and some of it we are prepared to react to if it happens. We don’t know how long this is going to last and we don’t know what further impacts or directives will happen. Part of the challenge for airports and airlines is if service keeps going down, revenue keeps going down and then the financial impacts become a huge concern,” Leblanc says.
