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Travel through Eppley Airfield slowly going back up


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Eppley Airfield is slowly starting to see more travelers, but the worry is some may be coming from coronavirus hotspots.

Officials with Eppley Airfield do not keep track of those numbers.

Although they say travel at the airport is up from where it was a couple of months ago, which means we could see more flights added.

"This is our first travel since the pandemic and so far it's been good," says Erin Romero.

Erin and Raimundo Romero are traveling to Omaha to visit their parents.

They say they weren't expecting to see a lot of other people flying too.

Erin says, "I would say on our way out here I was actually kind of surprised to see how many people were in the airport. We're not as familiar we're the Omaha airport ourselves so I'm not sure the busyness level, what to compare it to but I know out in Oakland I was actually kind of surprised to see how many people were out."

Travel is still down 70% from this time last year.

That's according to officials with Eppley airfield, but so far July is seeing bigger numbers than previous months.

"We normally see approximately 7,300 departing passengers through the terminal. Right now, we're seeing on average about 2,300 departing passengers a day," says Tim Schmitt, the director of operations for Eppley Airfield.

Eppley Airfield does not keep track of how many passengers are flying from which cities.

That means no tracking of how many fly in from virus hotspots.

Schmitt says, "Before the COVID-19 pandemic we had flight operations that went approximately 33 destinations airports. Currently, we're down to, with the reduction of flights, down to 20 destinations airports that passengers can fly to."

Douglas County Health Director Dr. Adi Pour says the number of travel-related virus cases is going up.

"It was very high in the beginning, it was all travel-related and than it went down and was at one point 3% for many weeks. It is now up to 4% so that's an increase of 2% of the last few weeks and we are looking at that number very closely," says Pour.

If you are traveling, Eppley Airfield is doing some new things to help with social distancing.

There's signage all around the airport now that explains things like 'no-touch to pay' options and what going through TSA is like.

Normally Eppley airport has about 82 departures a day.

Right now, There are about 42 flights flying out of Eppley Airfield.



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