Business
Detroit flights through La Crosse to resume in October
The La Crosse Airport had just celebrated one year of service to Detroit in March, when COVID-19 shut down a large majority of commercial plane flights in the U.S.
LSE has been without daily Detroit service since then, but the airport says Delta will resume the La Crosse-Detroit connection in October.
The airport’s director, Ian Turner, says the restoration of those flights shows confidence in La Crosse as a market.
But Turner says it may take some time to recover from this major slump.
“It’ll be between two and three years before we see 2019 passenger numbers,” said Turner. “We’re still down in the 50 per cent, to 60-plus per cent range on a year-over-year basis.”
Turner says their passenger level was up 20 per cent at the start of 2020, before the coronavirus shutdowns.
The passenger load on La Crosse flights in April was down 95 per cent from a year ago.
The airlines that serve La Crosse have slowly been restoring cancelled daily flights in recent weeks.