Airport Experience® News - Leadership 2022

Q & A

AIRPORT ADVOCACY ACI-NA’s Burke Outlines Key Goals For The Coming Year

BY C AROL WARD

Editor’s Note: There is no shortage of issues facing North American airports these days. The positive news is that most have returned to vibrancy after the devastating pandemic of 2020 and 2021. The more daunting reality is that labor is tight, funding is short and needs are great. Kevin Burke, president and CEO of Airport Council International – North America, says the trade group representing airports is gearing up for another season of lobbying for more funding and other measures that will help airports thrive in the coming years. He spoke with AXN’s Carol Ward about the group’s key priorities for 2023.

WARD: Can you give me a pulse of the North American airport industry? Are you feeling a lot of optimism from directors, or is there still some reticence about where we are as an industry? BURKE: We went through two and a half years of really tough times, and I do think we are on the other side of the curve. The pandemic hasn’t gone away but it’s somewhat in the rear-view mirror. What we’re seeing in terms of traffic is that many of our airports have gotten back to or have exceeded 2019 levels, which is the benchmark we’ve been using. I’d say across the board we are about 80 percent of 2019 traffic. Our Canadian airports are a little bit behind in recovery. They had different challenges than we did. They’re entire provinces were shut down so they couldn’t travel even around their country. That was challenging but they’ll be back. We’ve estimated from the beginning of the pandemic that a full industry recovery in the U.S. will probably happen next year. Right now it looks like we’re on our way. Now, a couple

things could get in the way of that, like a possible recession, which I hope is a shallow and short one. It’s always tricky to predict when you have economic circumstances that might hold people back from making travel decisions. We haven’t seen that yet. Airline bookings are up. I think this is going to be great holiday season. All in all, I think the industry has gotten through the worst. The challenge we have as an industry is not that people aren’t back to f lying. The challenge we have is getting workers back in our concession operations. The concessions are all raring to go, it’s just getting the number of employees back. When you have to start paying employees [at the level demanded currently] then everything else goes up - the cost of doing business, the cost to our passengers. Also, you don’t have to be badged when you work at a restaurant downtown but you have to get badged when you’re at an airport. Concessionaires are trying their best to get people back to work at airports but it’s a real challenge.

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