Airport Repairs Increase Safety

A project to replace one of the taxiways at San Juan Regional Airport will get underway in July, thanks to a seven and a half million dollar grant the airport recently received from the US Department of Transportation. You’re watching the Local News Network brought to you by Traegers and the Ute Mountain Casino. I’m Hailey Upsel. The development is funded by the Airport Improvement Program.

That’s where we normally get money every year for projects. The money is raised by a 10% tax on all airline tickets that are sold. And airports all over the country use that money for their major construction because airports are really expensive to maintain, so it’s paid for by the users.

The project will widen the taxiway by 50 feet. A requirement that the airport must meet before the Federal Aviation Administration allows larger aircraft to land in Farmington.

This is the last project in a series of projects that we have completed in order to make the airport ready for regional jet traffic. We were, we’ve been ready for regional jet traffic for a couple of years, but we were operating with a mod to the standard, a modification of the standard, and that we had to follow certain procedures in order to operate regional jets. But with this completion of this construction, we’ll no longer have to follow any special procedures and will be wide open for regional jets.

Four Corners Regional Airport handles about 3,500 flights a month, which includes private, corporate, and military aircraft. The grant will help the airport maintain the highest levels of safety and efficiency. But even with the taxiway improvements, Farmington will be kept waiting for passenger service to return.

The airlines are experiencing major pilot shortages. You may have noticed that for an example over the Memorial day weekend, they canceled tens of thousands of flights across the country, most of it due to crew, flight crew and staffing shortages throughout their entire ranks. So basically our conversations with any air carrier now just don’t exist because they are in the process of trying to figure out how to operate what they have, rather than add new cities.

Thanks for watching this edition of the Local News Network. I’m Haley Upsel.

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