Wednesday, November 14, 2001

Airport Passengers Decrease 18% in October

Year to Date Total up 12%

SIOUX CITY, IA - Barbara Sloniker, Director of Airport Marketing for the Sioux Gateway Airport, announced today an 18% decrease in total passengers for October compared to October of 2000. The decrease in October and September passengers comes at the end of sixth consecutive months of increased passengers.

“While we are beginning to see the passengers coming back, we’re not back up to the level where we want to be,” said Sloniker.  “The terrorist attacks on September 11th and the general slowdown in the economy have hurt the air travel industry as a whole.”

“While the past two months have been tough for the industry, it was only three months ago that airports were faced with a serious capacity problem,” said Glenn S. Januska, Airport Director.  “I think as we continue, as an industry, to implement new security measures, passenger confidence will grow.  When that happens and we see improvements in the economy we’ll see stabilization in the industry and will once again be talking about capacity issues.”