Traffic Rebound at Van Nuys Airport

After seeing an almost 50 percent drop in aircraft operations in April with the coronavirus outbreak, Van Nuys Airport has bounced back in activity. In July, the San Fernando Valley’s general aviation airport had a 15 percent increase in operations – meaning takeoffs and landings – compared to the same period a year ago. The airfield had 22,434 operations by private jets, helicopters and propeller aircraft during the month compared to 19,498 operations in July 2019. Flora Margheritis, the airport manager, wrote in an email to the Business Journal that the biggest spike during the month was in local civil operations, such as pilot training. “These types of aircraft operations are defined as operations performed by aircraft that remained in the local traffic pattern conducting training operations such as ‘touch and go’s’ or aircraft that flew to a designated practice area within a 20 mile radius of the VNY tower, and returned to VNY,” Margheritis said in the email. In April, the total operations had dropped by 48.1 percent to 10,299 flights. The coronavirus pandemic took its toll on the airport operations as business jet flights and charter flights were significantly reduced. Aircraft charter and management companies at the airport saw their business drop by 90 percent or more during the early months of the pandemic before seeing an increase in business. In a previous interview with the Business Journal from June, Scott Cutshall, senior vice president of business operations at Clay Lacy Aviation in Van Nuys, explained that the industry is still a long way from getting back to normal. The reason, he said, was because about 85 percent of private aircraft travel is done by business travelers. There are still a lot of companies across the country requiring employees to work from home and have placed restrictions on travel, he added. “A lot of those restrictions are in place well into the summer months,” Cutshall said in the interview. “Knowing that a large percentage of business aviation travel is driven by business need, we feel that is why it is going to take longer than one or two months to get back to some semblance of normal.”