Kelly Langevin, middle, and her co-worker Lee Escobar check in for a flight to Canada while at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport.Chattanooga Airport officials on Monday worried that persistent rains are hurting passenger boardings, and there are concerns another storm cloud may be brewing over future nonstop flights between the city and Washington, D.C.
For the first half of 2013 boardings fell by 6.6 percent to 145,372 passengers, figures show.
“A lot of it is driven by weather,” said Terry Hart, the airport’s chief executive. “It has been a challenging six to eight months with the weather in the Southeast.”
Hart said he’s not worried about canceled and late flights in Chattanooga as much as he is at hub airports in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.
Airport authority member Jim Hall said he landed in Chattanooga at 2 a.m. Saturday after a delay.