PORT ANGELES – Washington state Senator Maria Cantwell announced on Tuesday that airports across the state will receive more than $310 million in federal relief to help deal with the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, and Fairchild Airport here in Port Angeles is getting $69,000 of that money.
Airport Development Manager Dan Gase says the money is likely to go toward airport improvements.
“We’ve been anticipating some funds from the federal government. Didn’t know how much it was until just today we found out $69,000 and, you know, while it’s far less and some of the airports like Boeing and SeaTac, we’re really happy to get whatever we can. We’ve been starting to go through and compile a list of different improvements that we would like to use that money for around the airport, but we haven’t made any firm determination yet.”
Unlike bigger airports around the country, Fairchild hasn’t seen the heavy losses due to the downturn in commercial flights. We asked Gase if he viewed the funds as a windfall in our case.
“It would actually be a windfall category because the intent of most of the funds from the feds is to help offset passenger facility charges that some of the bigger airports get, where they have commercial service. But they didn’t leave our smaller community airports out of the mix. So we did get an allotment for some funds and we’d have to use that for improvements to the airport. We’ll be having those discussions here shortly and awaiting our deposit.”
Overall, 62 airports in the state will receive funding.