BANGOR, Maine — Bangor International Airport laid off 15 employees
Thursday and more layoffs are expected over the next two weeks, airport
Director Tony Caruso said Thursday morning.
Caruso said more layoffs will be announced through next week. At that
point, the airport will re-evaluate and determine what other changes
might be needed to solidify its finances.
Caruso declined to say how many employees he expects to lose their jobs.
The cuts will be the “hardest thing I’ve had to do since I started at the airport,” Caruso said.
Most of the employees who received layoff notices Thursday were
part-timers, some of whom may be invited to stay with the airport on an
on-call basis. Caruso said the cuts would affect part-time and full-time
employees, as well as union and nonunion employees, “across many
divisions of the airport.”
During the past decade, the airport has served as a refueling point
for more than 6,000 military charter flights. Those flights served as a
significant revenue stream for the airport. Each time a military flight
landed at the airport, BGR took in money for ground handling, passenger
handling, gate use, fuel and service and maintenance equipment for the
planes.
“We’ve had the privilege to work with these military flights for over
a decade, but we knew eventually that business would start to go away,”
Caruso said.
As the wars in the Middle East have wound down, the airport saw fewer
and fewer military flights on the tarmac. That meant a decline in
revenue. The airport has seen a 75 percent drop in the number of
military flights since 2010, but the most significant hit came during
2012-2013, when the airport saw a 55 percent decrease.
Caruso said it’s difficult to pinpoint the monetary impact the
decrease had on the airport because the military flight flow is
unpredictable and varies year-to-year and month-to-month, but the
reduction in flights has created fiscal concerns that call for changes.
Airport budget and employment totals were not immediately available.
As military action overseas continues to wind down, the airport is
looking to bolster the revenue it receives from other sources, the
director said. The airport has several new tenants, including Maine
State Police, which moved its Orono barracks to Bangor, and C&L
Aerospace, which is expanding its Bangor hub, and will continue to focus
on developing those sorts of revenue streams, according to Caruso.
Caruso also said that the airport saw 5 percent growth in passenger
numbers during the past year and hopes to continue to push that positive
trend.
Caruso said he doesn’t expect passengers will see any major changes resulting from the lost and reduced positions.