September 1, 2020

FALLS CREEK — Members of the Clearfield-Jefferson Counties Regional Airport Authority, at last week’s meeting, heard a review by Manager Bob Shaffer about the CARES Act funding for the DuBois Regional Airport (DUJ).

On June 17, Shaffer said the airport authorized expenditures, using CARES Act money, for the electric, National Fuel gas, the payroll and then the payoff of the mortgage to Farmer’s Bank.

Shaffer said the airport received a total of $248,391 in CARES Act funding on June 30.

“Then on August the 4th, we applied for the electric gas and payroll at $34,478.57.”

The CARES Act is aimed at mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on most segments of American business and infrastructure.

The airport learned last week that those requests have been approved and the money has been received.

“We’re very very pleased with that,” said Shaffer.

To summarize, Shaffer said, the airport’s total request was $282,879.48 and they received $248,391.

“This is as of the end of July,” said Shaffer. “We paid off the mortgage at $89,413.56, which left us a balance of $158,938.75 and then that requested $34,478.57 would give us a balance of 193,456, which as of today is actually what we have. Next month we’ll have a more detailed report having done this and thought about it and talked about it through finance.”

Shaffer also reviewed the airline passenger charts for June and July. In July, there were 189 passengers compared to June’s total of 159. Compared to 2019, there were 468 passengers in June and 627 in July. Year to date, Shaffer said there has been a total of 1,398 passengers compared to last year’s total of 3,005 passengers.

“We’re less than half of where we were last year at mid-year on the calendar year,” said Shaffer.

“It’s just nice to see we are getting passengers back,” said authority Chairman Jay Chamberlain. “We had a low in April of 21, and as you said July was up to 189. So we are slowly getting some passengers back.”

“We have had some issues. There’s an issue today with some maintenance,” said Shaffer. “There had been in a prior week, and I think back almost a month ago there was an issue. So, there has been a few maintenance issues in there as well, where there’s been some canceled flights.”

With regard to landings, Shaffer said there were 164 in June and 165 in July.

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