Commercial flights at Arnold Palmer airport to cease next week

Commercial flights at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport will stop starting Wednesday and, as a result, about a third of its 90 workers will be furloughed, officials said.

Spirit Airlines, the lone commercial carrier at the Unity airport, will continue to operate its daily schedules through Tuesday but then will halt all air traffic there through at least May 4, said Gabe Monzo, executive director of the Westmoreland County Airport Authority.

“This is bad,” he said. “It’s a tough situation but something we can recover from.”

Spirit operates flights from Arnold Palmer to five locations: Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa and Ft. Myers in Florida as well as to Myrtle Beach, S.C. Those flights are expected to continue to operate as scheduled until Wednesday. But, as the coronavirus pandemic limits travel throughout the country, flights to and from the Latrobe area have been impacted.

Flights that typically come close to filling the 175-seat planes have been nearly empty over the last two weeks, averaging five to 10 passengers each, Monzo said. The airport saw about 150,000 passengers move through its gates last year.

Representatives from Spirit could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Spirit is expected to store about seven planes at the airport over the next month, according to Monzo.

Meanwhile, the airport will remain open for private aviation and charter service, he said.

Still, the suspension of commercial flights will result in the need for fewer employees, including those who work at the airline counter, ramps and other support services.

Airport maintenance staff and administrators, for now, are expected to remain on the job. Monzo said maintenance crews will continue to cut grass, clean the facility and use some of the downtime in flights to paint the airport.

Work on a $13.2 million construction project to widen the runway remains on schedule to begin next week, with its expected completion date set for October. Airport officials said a two-week suspension for all flights in September still is scheduled to accommodate the runway expansion project.

“Everything is strong at the airport and, after this is done, we’ll hit the ground running and hopefully do more because we’ll have a wider runway,” Monzo said.

Flights have been canceled and suspended throughout the country over the last month, including at Pittsburgh International Airport, which is housing up to 100 planes grounded because of the pandemic.