JIA gets several nonstop flights to major cities like Los Angeles, D.C.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — If any industry has been hit hard by COVID-19, it would be the airline industry.

Pre-COVID-19, the Jacksonville International Airport said it saw about 200 arrivals and departures a day. Now, that number is roughly cut in half.

“Make no mistake, the coronavirus has affected our industry almost like no other industry,” Greg Willis, Marketing and Public Relations Manager at JIA, said.

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But the airport has announced a few more flights being added to the list.

“In the middle of coronavirus, we’ve been able to see some green shoots in terms of new service coming next year,” Willis added.

Willis says people can now fly nonstop to Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale by way of Silver Airways. The inaugural flights jetted off Monday morning.

Those routes come just a week after JetBlue announced its nonstop services to Los Angeles and Raleigh-Durham, which came after Southwest Airlines’ announcement of nonstop routes to St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

While new flights means more travelers, still, COVID-19 remains a concern.

“Whether you work in the airport or an airline, we’re all doing our best to keep the passengers safe and make them feel comfortable, whether that’s requiring masks in the terminal, cleaning,” Willis explained.

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The Jacksonville Aviation Authority tells Action News Jax the new flights are a ray of hope after the airport had to postpone its expansion of Concourse B back in May during the pandemic. Willis says the project is still postponed though, because flight traffic is still down by about 60 percent from what it was in previous years.

Willis says 2019 hit a record high with seven million passengers coming through JIA. He said once the airport hits that level of flight traffic again, the Concourse B expansion project will pick back up.

Cox Media Group