AC maintenance underway at Muñoz Marín Airport
Jorge Hernández, the president of Aerostar Puerto Rico, which operates Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, announced that maintenance work on the air conditioning system at the airport will be carried out until early Friday morning, which could affect the temperature in parts of the main terminal.
The maintenance work on the climate control system started at 5 p.m. on Thursday and was scheduled to end at 3 a.m. on Friday. However, stabilizing the temperature may take a few additional hours, he said.
Hernández indicated that portable air conditioners will be placed in the affected area of the central terminal, which extends from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) central checkpoint to the El Mesón restaurant, to mitigate the impact.
The executive explained that these repairs are part of the maintenance program and ongoing conservation efforts that Aerostar Puerto Rico regularly conducts at the airport, with an annual investment of approximately $500,000. He added that once the work is completed, the industrial equipment will be fully functional.
Repair crews will focus their efforts on correcting a water leak in a 10-inch pipe that supplies the chillers, or industrial cooling units, of the airport’s climate control system.
The schedule for the maintenance tasks was strategically selected, considering the traditionally less air traffic volume late at night and in the early morning.
“This way, we will minimize the effect on travelers as much as possible, although we cannot completely rule out that there will be a change in temperature,” Hernández said. “We have spared no expense in maintaining adequate climate control at the airport, continuously investing a significant amount of resources in the purchase and rehabilitation of the necessary equipment to ensure a good experience for travelers.”
In other news, Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste S.A.B. de C.V. – the sponsor that holds the majority ownership in Aerostar Airport Holdings, the Puerto Rico government’s private partner to run the island’s largest airport – announced that passenger traffic for June across its portfolio of concessions, which includes airports in southern Mexico, the U.S. and Colombia, reached 5.9 million passengers. This figure is 4.5% higher than the levels reported in June last year.
Passenger traffic increased 22.3% in Puerto Rico. The increase in passenger traffic in Mexico and Puerto Rico was primarily driven by domestic, or stateside, travelers, which rose by 19% and 20.5%, respectively. The surge was further supported by growth in international traffic of 3% and 36.4%, respectively.
