Orlando International Airport Update
Orlando International airport Senior Director of Marking and Air Service Development Vicki Jaramillo discusses the airport’s expansion, long-haul wish list and attractive domestic markets and traffic from Orlando to Brazil.
Transcript
Vicki JaramilloWell, I'm pleased to say, first of all, that Orlando International Airport is now the busiest passenger airport in Florida, with 45 million passengers. Right now, we're under a capital improvement program to update the current facility as we start to build our South Terminal, which will open in January/February of 2021, so it's balancing the current facilities while we also look to build the South Terminal.
Let's see, our Long Haul wishlist. Number one would be London, Heathrow. Even though Orlando currently has about four to five non-stops a day to London, Gatwick; Heathrow is what the business traveler and the people are wanting, so Heathrow would be the top of the list. Rio was, but now we have Rio service from Latam and then Amsterdam recently started with Delta, but now also we're after Buenos Aires, Argentina because many of the people coming from Argentina are having to come through another gateway for the lack of service. So that's a market we've seen tremendously rebound. Then I would say on the Asia side, Tokyo is at the top of the list.
Absolutely. We did have our lowest point as far as seats back last year, but by this year of November of 2018, we'll have close to 500,000 seats from Brazil, and that's from seven different Brazilian markets. So we have seen a rebound, and it's not just from Sao Paulo and Rio, but it's from other markets as well, including Fortaleza, [inaudible 00:01:23], La Bella Ristorante. So we've been very happy coming back with the Brazilian market.
I think we're fortunate. We serve 82 nonstop destinations from Orlando, which is the most in Florida from any airport. There are some I would call secondary and tertiary cities, I would say. Some of the areas of North Carolina, the Asheville, the Greenvilles. Some of those markets, and those are a little more challenging to get. Also, Huntsville was a market we were after for a long time, so finally we're having new service starting to Huntsville, because there's a large aerospace community between central Florida and the Huntsville area. So sometimes, the smaller ones are the tougher ones, yeah.
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