KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
Kayla Desroches/KMXT
Alaska Airlines is renovating the Kodiak Benny Benson State Airport, one of the airlines’ 11 terminals in the state. But following complaints about congestion, they’re going back in do some extra remodeling.
Regional vice president Marilyn Romano says, following this year’s construction, there’s now a larger waiting room and restroom after security, but the baggage area is causing traffic.
The public has been vocal about the limited space.
Romano says they’ve listened to the community and are working on a plan to correct the problem.
“That will look like, do we need to move some walls, do we need to look at where cargo customers, for example, come in and out? Do we need to look at that entrance and maybe not have the same flow of traffic for people possibly coming to bring things that will go to our cargo area in the same area that passengers are coming in and out with luggage?”
Romano says Alaska Airlines’ station manager gave them consistent feedback during construction and the airlines real estate division checked in on the work on a regular basis.
“We started to identify the problem. It was so far down the road of being completed that we needed to get it complete and you needed to have it complete and people using it in order to truly see where the bottlenecks were, where the issues were, and what we needed to fix.”
Romano says Alaska Airlines is working with their architect to figure out how to approach this final step in renovations. She says they hope to begin work by early September and have construction finished by the end of the year.
