Can the Austin Airport Speed Up Its Sorely Needed Expansion?

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AUS News

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport,City Of Austin,Eugene Sepulveda

Explosive growth and understaffing lead to long lines and near-misses

in the U.S. From 2020 to 2022, the Aus tin metro area, including Georgetown and Round Rock, grew at the. As we came out of the pandemic, that cohort of new residents and businesses decided to flex its travel budget, and passenger traffic at the Aus tin-Bergstrom International Airport – now known as AUS – increased 25% from 2019 to 2022.

Longer lines also mean “front-line workers do more with less,” says Elizabeth Hibbard, a flight attendant and United AFA Council 42 president. It’s harder for flight attendants to get to and from the airport, which adds hours to their unpaid labor. from the old Mueller airport to the opening of AUS: “That airport looked so big. And now it appears so little. Yesterday I missed my connection by three minutes because it was packed as if it were Thanksgiving Day,” Doggett told us in April.

A nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers has led to mandatory overtime shifts and 60-hour weeks. There is only one training facility in the entire country, in Oklahoma, and new trainees often take years to enter the workforce. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, only 60% of those who began training between FY 2014 and 2017 successfully completed it, and there is an increasing reliance on computer instruction due to a lack of retired controllers available to teach.

These safety tools will help alleviate stress on staff at the airport. But as long as passenger traffic continues to boom, they’ll continue to have to fit more people than the physical space is designed for. The current capacity is meant for 15 million passengers per year, and in recent years the airport has consistently surpassed that. Passenger traffic last year was 22 million.Current estimates for the new concourse’s completion stretch into the mid-2030s, and that may be optimistic.

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport City Of Austin Eugene Sepulveda Sam Haynes

 

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