The Federal Aviation Administration is cutting flights at 40 of the nation’s largest airports amid the government shutdown. Those cuts were put into place last Friday, and are expected to ramp up to 10% of all flights by Nov. 14.
Those reductions could cause a domino effect at smaller operations, like Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport. It services some of those larger airports on connecting flights.
Teresa Simmerman is the Blue Grass Airport’s community manager. She said they haven’t yet been impacted by the cuts, but it is a possibility.
“I think the best thing to keep in mind, if you have travel plans in the next several days coming up soon, just keep in touch with your airline,” Simmerman said. “I know they're going to be doing a great job of keeping in touch with passengers and updating them in as timely a manner as possible.”
The Blue Grass Airport has around 30 departing flights each day, with around 2,000 to 3,000 daily passengers. Simmerman said it’s too early to tell if that would cause a reduction in foot traffic.
“There is a potential there. But you could also say the reverse of that, that if flights are canceled out of CVG (in Cincinnati) or SDF (in Louisville) because they were in the top 40, some of those folks might look to travel out of Lexington,’ she said.
Simmerman said in the meantime, they haven’t had any operational impacts as part of the shutdown.
