City acts to defer airline rent

An Atlanta City Council committee is in favor of deferring three months of airline rent at Hartsfield-Jackson International until next year due to the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on travel. The council’s transportation committee on Wednesday voted to recommend that airline rent and landing fees for April-June 2020 are put on hold until the first half of 2021. The measure to defer airline rent now goes to the full City Council for consideration Monday.

The situation

Airport general manager John Selden this week noted Delta Air Lines has been burning through millions of dollars in cash a day due to the plunge in travel.

Delta and other airlines have received billions of dollars in coronavirus relief funding from the federal CARES Act, and Hartsfield-Jackson received approval for $338.5 million from the federal stimulus funds to help replace lost revenue from the sharp decline in travel.

The airport has also granted rent relief to concessionaires and rental car companies.

The details

Airlines will pay the back rent in five payments from January to May of 2021, according to Selden.

The rent deferral, which was first proposed by Selden in April, applies to 18 passenger airlines and 19 cargo carriers that have leases with the airport.

Separately, the City Council transportation committee voted in favor of a $125 million raft of funding toward a larger project to expand Concourse T with five new gates.

The committee also voted to

approve a contract amendment to add $3 million for escalator and elevator maintenance at the airport’s Rental Car Center, which is connected to the airport via Sky Train.

That includes $1 million to staff the facility with a dedicated technician 16 hours a day, 365 days a year to respond when people get trapped in an elevator or the escalator gets jammed, which

“can potentially endanger customers,” according to airport documents submitted to the City Council.

The documents cited “frequent failures” in its escalators and elevators at the rental car center, which opened in 2009, and “significant shortcomings” in maintenance, causing the need to replace parts of escalators and look for ways to improve reliability and safety.

HYOSUB SHIN / HYOSUB.SHIN@AJC.COM Only about a third of the normal number of passengers travel through Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport since the cornonavirus virtually stopped air traffic in March.