GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport is welcoming passengers back with a new level of clean in the terminal, with extensive measures being taken to protect worker and passenger safety.
“As business and life kind of starts getting back to normal we’re starting to see those passenger numbers rise,” says Airport Director Marty Piette, “We had days where there were a handful of people – you can count on one hand how many people traveled through the airport. So to see us approaching that 200 per person per day level is encouraging.”
The airport is connecting regularly with area businesses, as well as the travel and tourism industries, to share their best practices and how all parties can move forward together.
“In order for economy to work you need critical infrastructure like roads planes trains and automobiles here we have an airport it’s critical for our economy to be able to operate so that we can do business globally,” says Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach, “We’ve created an environment where people should feel safe traveling through their airport…For us to be able to have this operation available for the public in for us to be able of coexist with COVID, it’s really important for us to make sure that we build that consumer confidence within the public so that they can travel safely.
The airport has been taking major strides since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to improve health and safety in their terminals, and with partnering airlines.
All housekeeping staff has received additional training on proper cleaning and disinfecting – including appropriate mask and glove wearing and disposal. One individual housekeeper has been solely dedicated to continuously sanitize and clean all high-touch surfaces like hand rails and door handles.
Seating has been reduced or reconfigured in the terminal for better social distancing, and stickers reminding people of proper distancing are spread throughout the building. Other COVID-19 posters are also placed on entrances and bathroom doors. There are also temporary contactless automatic hand sanitizing stations installed, with permanent stands expected to arrive in the next month or so.
“We’ve also had a contractor disinfect all the public areas of the terminal building and applied what’s known as Enviro-shield to all of those areas, and we’ll continue to do that as we move on,” Piette says.
The cleaning process will become even more high-tech in the next few weeks. The airport has invested in a backpack, battery-powered disinfecting sprayer, a UV-C sanitation cart that will clean common areas like bathrooms, and UV-C escalator handrail sanitizing lights.
The terminal also sells extra gloves, masks, and other PPE-type equipment through vending machines for those who may want them.
With all of the safety and health additions to the facility, along with the predicted continued reopening of the economy and other states – travel is expected to pick up even more over the course of the next few months.
“We’re seeing a lot of searches for that 1-3 months or 2-4 month time frame. Not a lot of surprise, kind of what we expected. So I think as we get into that July and August time frame we’ll start to see travel increased even more than it is now,” Piette says.
