A former airplane hangar at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport near Latrobe is scheduled to be razed at the end of the month, paving the way for the long-awaited terminal expansion project to begin, the authority’s engineer said.

The demolition will take about a month, setting up the work on a new terminal, said Scott D. Kunselman, an engineer for the Westmoreland County Airport Authority. Site preparation where the Latrobe Airline Services hangar now sits will be ongoing through the fall, with grading and building the foundation for the terminal, Kunselman said Tuesday.

Allegheny Construction Group of Bridgeville started work in July on a replacement equipment storage facility farther from the terminal.

The expansion has been estimated to cost about $22 million. Allegheny Construction Group was awarded a $7.95 million contract this year. The Federal Aviation Administration is processing applications for three grants totaling about $8.5 million, Kunselman said.

ABS Building Systems Integrators of McKeesport is repairing the roof of the air traffic control tower. An elevator shaft will be installed inside the tower, which was constructed in 1981, Kunselman said.

Uptick in passengers

While the authority continues to try to attract other discount carriers to serve the airport in Unity, Spirit Airlines, the lone scheduled carrier, saw an uptick in passengers last month — from 9,533 in March to 12,304 in April and about 4,000 more than a year ago. But passenger load for April was less than one-half of those riding Spirit in April 2021, when Spirit also connected Arnold Palmer Regional with Fort Lauderdale.

There is no indication from Spirit it will give Arnold Palmer Regional more destinations than ones in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Orlando, Fla., said Gabe Monzo, airport authority executive director.

A spokesperson for Spirit could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Spirit does plan to serve some flights to Myrtle Beach next month with a 225-seat Airbus 321, although the airline had said it would initiate that service this month, Monzo said.

What has been going “great guns” at the airport are Sun Country Air’s charter flights to the casino cities of Atlantic City, N.J., and Biloxi, Miss., Monzo said.

Charter flights took 800 people from Arnold Palmer Regional on May 3.

“They got a waiting list of gamblers” wanting to fly to those destinations, Monzo said.

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