FAA awards $13.2M to LMM Airport for upgrades; Sept. traffic up 19.9%
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it has awarded $13.2 million to the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (LMM) to reconstruct the apron, or the area where aircraft are parked.
The grant is part of a global $479.1 million that the US Department of Transportation’s FAA is distributing in airport infrastructure grants to 123 projects at airports across all 50 states, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico.
“These grants will help strengthen our country’s airports and the communities they serve by making investments that create jobs and increase safety, sustainability and accessibility,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.
The LMM is Puerto Rico’s main airport hub, which in September 2021 received 19.9% more traffic when compared to pre-pandemic levels during the same month in 2019, according to data released by ASUR — parent company of Aerostar, which operates the facility.
In its monthly report, the company stated that traffic reached 684,451 passengers in September 2021, vs. 571,010 on record for September 2019. September 2020 traffic reached 297,505, as pandemic restrictions were still in place.
The most recent figure is broken down into 638,187 in domestic traffic and 46,264 in international travelers, a number that has yet to pick up as countries open their borders.
So far this year, close to 7.2 million passengers have used the LMM facility, up 1.5% when compared to the 7 million during the same period through September 2019. During the first nine months of 2020, some 3.5 million travelers reportedly used the airport.
