Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA) this week applauded members of the U.S. House of Representatives for including $8 billion for domestic airports in their latest COVID-19 relief proposal.
“On behalf of U.S. airports, we thank House leaders for including much-needed funds for airports in their latest COVID-relief bill,” said Kevin Burke, ACI-NA president and CEO. “Airports have assumed enormous new costs to ensure the health and safety of their terminals for passengers and workers alike at a time when the industry continues to lose billions of dollars a year into the pandemic and the prospects for recovery are increasingly uncertain.”
ACI-NA projects that U.S. airports will lose an additional $17 billion or more between April 2021 and March 2022 because of the prolonged decline in air traffic due to the pandemic. These losses are in addition to the $23 billion U.S. airports are expected to lose between March 2020 and March 2021, the trade organization said.
ACI-NA also said that U.S. airports’ debt burden was near $107 billion, adding airports are on the hook to pay approximately $16 billion to service that debt for their 2020 and 2021 fiscal years, despite the revenue declines caused by the pandemic.
“These cash flow concerns will significantly constrain airports’ ability to fund capacity improvements to plan for long-term future growth,” ACI-NA added in a press release.
