Harlingen Airport Board Discusses Effect of Winter Storms

Feb. 27—HARLINGEN — From households and infrastructure to wildlife, the winter storms that struck the Rio Grande Valley last week affected many.

During a meeting held on Friday, the City of Harlingen Airport Board discussed their response to the winter weather.

Director of Aviation Marvin "Marv" Esterly gave a report of how the airport fared during the power outages.

"We were not spared here in the Rio Grande Valley, as we all know with the 25 degree temperatures, and it was pretty difficult," he said. "I can tell you that the staff has done an unbelievable job to make sure that we stayed open and up and running."

According to Esterly, it was quite a challenge, but the generators performed flawlessly and kept the airport up and running.

"I know many of you probably remember we had some issues with the generator several years back and this proved that everything was done correctly and the preventive maintenance program that we do on these generators is working," he told the board.

Esterly said the airport had a significant amount of airline cancelations and delays.

"Some of it was because of the icing here. The aircraft couldn't be de-iced," he explained. "Southwest is the only airline here that can do de-icing and they did de-ice during several mornings here during the week, but a lot of it was plagued from, of course, weather throughout the state of Texas."

Esterly said Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas had much more severe weather than Harlingen did, which is why most of those flights were cancelled due to icing and snow conditions.

According to Esterly, the airport didn't have significant weather-related maintenance issues, such as broken or frozen pipes because they were able to keep the heat on.

"We did start to run into employee fuel problems," he said. "Some employees and personal POV's couldn't get to work because they didn't have fuel so that was an issue we had to deal with at the end, but luckily we came out of it before it became a major issue."

Another problem experienced were power issues that caused short periods without air traffic control services.

Esterly said personnel have had conversations recently with the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA) on the need for a total revamp or total new air traffic control tower.

"This air traffic control tower is very old and is plagued with issues so that conversation will continue with the FAA," he said. "This just puts an exclamation point at the end of it."

He explained that the airport is part of a contract tower program so the FAA supplies the tower to the contractor.

"The contractor is trying to get them to make the improvements to the tower as well," he said. "We're going to continue to have that conversation as we move forward and hopefully we're able to get the FAA to see the need."

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