MFR prepares for the worst while remaining optimistic

MFR prepares for the worst while remaining optimistic

12 will continue to keep you updated.newswatch 1n spoke with the rogue valley international airport today.

She joins us live with why they're optomistic about the future.

Overall travel numbers have plumetted -- travel restrictions and stay-home orders have all but ended flights around the country and the world but today when i spoke with the rogue valley international medford airport, they said they're starting to see signs of recovery.

Jason says: "you know obviously we've had a significant reduction in our capacity like every airport across the country and that's because the passenger demand is not there right now it is starting to come back if you track the tsa numbers" tsa numbers show the number of passengers that go through tsa checkpoints in the country -- last week that number was just over 154-thousand people and this week it was just over 190-thousand people.

Jason says: "so there is an uptick in passenger travel week over week" and it's a part of a larger more consistent trend.

Jason says: "we've been seeing that now for the last couple of weeks and we're excited to see passengers return to mfr and we're excited to see passengers return to the air around the country" while those trends are promising, airlines are still going to have to recover from a huge hit and that could lead to them cutting routes to smaller airports.

Jason says: we're trying to get ahead of that we're trying to put together the data we need to show the airlines why they need to continue service in our airport with the current routes that we already have a survey was sent out to people in the rogue valley, asking about business travel specifically -- that survey along with previous year's data will help form a presentation to show the value of medford.

Jason says: "we're trying to do everything we can to prevent any losses of service if there was to be any" creating portfolios like this isn't anything new but it is unique during the virus.

Jason says: "we're always doing these types of reports we're always trying to put together data to build a case for a route that we might be trying to win it's not as often that we're trying to keep a route" m-f-r had almost three straight years of year over year travel increase and in febrary, before covid-19, they were up by 7% from last year.

The airport says they expect they'll see similary numbers as soon as demand returns.

Reporting live from home, alicia