RDU Slashes Its Budget, Consolidates Parking as Coronavirus Depletes NC Travelers
Raleigh-Durham International Airport is closing its remote parking lots and has cut $95 million in spending for the coming year because of the steep drop in travelers due to COVID-19.
The RDU Airport Authority on Thursday approved a budget for the fiscal year that begins April 1. That budget was to include $297 million for operations, capital projects and debt payments, but board members decided to cut it by a third because of lower revenue from fees paid by passengers, airlines, concessionaires and others.
Airport president Michael Landguth said it’s too soon to say exactly what the lower spending will mean.
“There will be a lot of things,” Landguth said in an interview after the board’s decision. “We’re triaging at this point, to try to clearly understand what that looks like.”
One change that is definitely coming involves parking. Economy lots 3 and 4 and the Express lot just north of the terminals will be closed by Monday, Landguth said. Visitors will be directed to the RDU central parking decks, between the terminals, where the daily rate will be reduced from $15 to $10.
Passengers on arriving flights that are still parked in the remote lots will be able to take shuttles to their cars until the lots are empty. Economy 4 was 31 percent full on Thursday, while Economy 3, which has been closed all this week, was only 7 percent full.
Decline in air travel
The decline in air travel has been swift and dramatic. In February, more than 482,000 people boarded flights at RDU, up 8.8% from a year earlier. In the first week of March, boardings were down 8.3%, according to Transportation Security Administration checkpoint data, and they’ve continued to drop, Landguth said.
Airlines have been hammered by falling demand because of coronavirus and have made increasingly severe announcements about cutbacks. On Wednesday, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, the busiest carrier at RDU with about a third of the airport’s passengers, said the company would cut its worldwide capacity by 70 percent “until demand starts to recover.”
Landguth said airlines have made few changes to their schedules at RDU yet, but they are coming.
“They keep telling us that’s imminent,” he said. “We’re anticipating that will come pretty quickly.”
To ease concern about travelers and stem the potential spread of coronavirus, RDU has taken steps to more frequently and thoroughly clean surfaces touched by passengers. Two weeks ago, it ordered more than 100 hand sanitizing stations to put in “high-touch areas” throughout the terminals, but as of Thursday they still had not arrived.
“There’s such a backlog associated with these things,” Landguth said. “They’re trying, but the demand is far outstripping what the supply is.”
One change that RDU has put off is the move of two low-cost carriers, Spirit and Allegiant, from Terminal 2 to join Southwest Airlines in Terminal 1. That was scheduled to take place April 1, with the reopening of ticketing counters and two mothballed gates. That move, designed to ease overcrowding in Terminal 2, is now scheduled to take place June 1.
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