STEWART AIRPORT – The number of passengers using New York Stewart International Airport in recent months has declined and that is due to the suspension of Boeing 737 Max jets because of two crashes involving foreign carriers.
Norwegian Air employed those jets for its European flights from Stewart, and consolidated to one jumbo-jet flight to Dublin per day.
Stewart Business Development Director Michael Torelli told the Stewart Airport Commission on Tuesday that the drop in passengers was not unexpected.
“We are roughly running a nine percent decline over last year and we know that is directly attributable to the issue that Boeing is having with the 737 Max and the lack of international flights,” he said. “International is down compared to last year but domestic is holding their own; actually domestic is up 2.5 percent.”
In the first six months of this year, 277,682 people flew at Stewart compared with 306,636 during the same period last year.
Cargo tonnage, on the other hand, has shot up in the first six months of the year increased by 18 percent, but since daily cargo service to Los Angeles began carrying US Mail, tonnage has risen by 110 percent.
“The addition of the US Postal Service sending mail from here to the west coast on Kalitta flights with Atlantic Aviation has doubled our through-put in June. This is our first full month of the operation,” he said.
In the first six months of the year, a total of 13,419 tons of cargo has passed through Stewart as compared with 11,352 tons last year.
