Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis met with airport and airline executives in South Florida Friday to urge passengers to get back to flying.
DeSantis hosted a roundtable discussion at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, where executives from JetBlue and Spirit talked about how they’ve heard of zero coronavirus cases coming out of the airline industry.
"The evidence is the evidence and I think it is something that is safe for people to do, because people have been doing it, not at levels that we are used to, but people have been doing it throughout this whole time and I think a track record has been developed," DeSantis said.
They touted the recycled air on their airplanes and enhanced health and safety measures, emphasizing how safety is not new to their industry.
Another topic of discussion was the economic impact the pandemic has had on the industry, with hundreds of thousands of jobs, in the airlines and ancillary, lost or impacted.
"We need to see that traveling public start to come back because this is not something that can be sustained long, long term, we have bills to pay," FLL CEO Mark Gale said.
Travel numbers are still way down from where they were before the coronavirus pandemic, but the industry expects some increased traffic in September and October.
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"People who have a first experience who maybe are a little bit, have some intrepidation about flying, a lot of the feedback we’re getting is 'wow, now that I have done this, it’s a lot better than I thought it would be,'" Spirit COO John Bendoraitis said.
