Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Cassotis at CAPA’s Airlines in Transition 2022 summit
Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which includes the management of Pittsburgh International Airport, sees a strong opportunity for the industry to better meet consumer expectations. The executive spoke to CAPA TV on the sidelines of the CAPA Airline Leader Summit - 'Airlines in Transition 2022’ about latest industry trends, the recovery of air travel, how government support eased pressures in returning capacity to meet a fast rebound in demand, the return of airline operations, pushing ahead with a terminal modernisation programme and how it will be based on a service rather than technology vision.
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Transcript
Christina Cassotis:We're seeing that travelers are eager to travel. We are seeing that people are travelers. They want to go places. I don't think there's any getting back to normal. I think that there's just continued uncertainty that we all need to continually manage, whether we're the traveler or the airport or the airline. There is no going back. So The world has changed. The pandemic accelerated a lot of things, particularly around technology, but also around consumer expectations. And I think that's one of the things that is our opportunity as an industry is to get it right. Well, there are more crowds than there were 2 years ago. We're thrilled. And people seem to have a lot more patience. I will tell you that. So we were ready. We staffed up in order to get ready for the return of travel. But our government took care of us as airports. There was actually a set side of federal money for airports so that we could maintain staffing levels. And so we didn't have the mad scramble to get back up to can we actually process passengers. So for us, it was really just a question of getting our sea legs back. Right. OK, now we're doing things differently than we have for the past 2 years. But we've had a lot of success and we're really excited about the fact that we get to see passengers back in the terminal again and we get to We get to understand what, what is new for them in terms of expectations. So during the pandemic, we not only kept our entire staff safe, we also got the airlines and all of our signatory carriers to sign on to a $1.4 billion terminal modernisation program. We broke ground on that in July. We launched the world's first airport microgrid, so we're completely energy independent. We have 5 natural gas-fired turbines and acres and acres of solar that is making up the energy input to the terminal. So we're completely resilient and redundant, lowered our carbon footprint, stood up an entire development for additive manufacturing as a strategic landlord, and launched the Xbridge, which is an innovation space that tests all the technology that will go into the new terminal. So we didn't stop. So all of our airline partners are back now that BA has announced that they're coming back on June 3rd. We're so excited. So that's 4 times a week, year-round, starting on June 3rd. And yeah, everybody's back. Actually, we've picked up additional airlines. Breeze is a new airline that is serving us now, and we've picked up additional markets. So, you know, we're highly reliant on the U.S. domestic market, although we do have a significant international market. So we've actually weathered— we've weathered this pandemic pretty well from the perspective of the fact that there was a pandemic. It was a huge disruption to people, clearly. To the folks who work with us, their families, and those lives. But we, as an organisation, we got it all done. So digital processes for us are part of what we're doing anyway with the new terminal. So we committed to building, as we said, the smartest terminal in the world. And the way that we're doing that is we're actually starting with a services vision, not a technology vision. What we're starting with is what should the passenger journey be? Then we'll figure out the technology. So to the extent that things should be digital and touchless, then we'll enable that. But we want to make sure That when things go wrong, that there's a high-touch personal experience that people can count on. So thematically, we are going for, we got you. Whatever's going on with you at an airport, you're probably on your way to something important, either good or bad or scary or anxious or exciting. So our job is to make sure that happens and we don't add to your stress level, which, by the way, is already exacerbated because the world is crazy, right? So So that's what I mean. There's no new normal. We just have to keep continually making sure that we can meet people where they are and provide the environment where they feel like they're okay. Thank you.
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