Nearly half of the Commonwealth Ports Authority\u2019s $15-million consolidated operational budget is funded by aviation revenue, so when airplanes are not landing and tourists are not coming or going, that means CPA is not making any money.<\/p>\n
CPA board chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds underscored this point Wednesday after confirming that United Airlines has officially notified CPA about suspending its flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays beginning March 30 through April 30.<\/p>\n
She said CPA appreciates the advance notice and their continued strong partnership with United Airlines. \u201cWe pledge to continue to find ways and work collaboratively with all of our industry partners to endure these unprecedented challenging times,\u201d King-Hinds said.<\/p>\n
It must be noted, though, that, given the continued proliferation of COVID-19 globally and the extraordinary measures that countries are implementing to contain the outbreak\u2014with citizens in the millions now being quarantined\u2014people should expect that the CNMI\u2019s travel and tourism industry will be hit the hardest, she said.<\/p>\n
This lack of plane traffic, King-Hinds said, will also have a definite impact on CPA\u2019s sources of non-aviation revenues\u2014which rely on planes landing and tourists walking through the airport\u2014to make their income. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese are times like we\u2019ve never seen or experienced,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging this sad state of affairs, King-Hinds said the only spot of hope for now is that things will get better sooner rather than later. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut hope is not a plan. And the best thing we can do right now is plan for the worst-case scenario and to stay informed about what\u2019s going on so that we don\u2019t participate in the dissemination of misinformation and further exacerbate an already stressful situation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This, the chairwoman added, should not just be the responsibility of the government but that of every citizen who must all rise above the petty and come together to do their part to provide solace and comfort to the community and \u201creally live what it means to be Marianas strong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nearly half of the Commonwealth Ports Authority\u2019s $15-million consolidated operational budget is funded by aviation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}