Name: Pittsburgh International Airport CEO: no scarring effect from shutdown
Uploaded: 2025-11-26T19:32:21.763Z
Duration: 2 min 59 s
Description: Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Cassotis joins CNBC’s ‘Money Movers’ to discuss whether air travelers will see a scarring effect from the recent government shutdown, the expansion of airport infrastructure, and more.

Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Cassotis joins CNBC’s ‘Money Movers’ to discuss whether air travelers will see a scarring effect from the recent government shutdown, the expansion of airport infrastructure, and more.

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Kasotas stated that she does not expect any lasting negative effects from the recent government shutdown on air travel. Kasotas emphasized that travel demand remains strong, with projections for a record number of Thanksgiving travelers and a 10.5% increase in traffic at Pittsburgh compared to last year.

Kasotas also highlighted recent operational improvements, including the opening of a new terminal, to accommodate the surge in travelers. She advocated for reforms to separate the FAA and air traffic control funding from congressional budget negotiations to ensure the system's robustness.

Pittsburgh International Airport CEO: no scarring effect from shutdown

Exactly two weeks since the longest government shutdown in history ended, and U.S. airports are facing yet another stress test, this expected record number of Thanksgiving air travelers. Lobbying group Airlines for America projecting that number could reach more than 31 million people in the air between last Friday and this coming Monday, December 1st. Joining us this morning is Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Kasotas. Christina, thanks for the time. Great to talk to you. Thank you. Thanks for having me this morning, and I'm happy to be here. So we mentioned the shutdown, and I guess the first question would be whether you expect any kind of scarring effects that might make travel this weekend difficult. I do not expect scarring effects. I expect that travel continues to be resilient. We're going to see it at our airport and at airports across the country. People want to travel. It is something that is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity, and we're ready. You think weather's going to cooperate overall? Depends on where you live. Yes. I'm hoping. You know, as we say in Pittsburgh, if you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes. It might change. So I don't know. I'm hoping that so far we're expecting it to cooperate, and I hope for everybody who's trying to get somewhere that it does, because I know how much Thanksgiving means to people. One of the things the shutdown did, though, was explain to people and remind us how close to the edge we are working operationally, especially when it comes to traffic control. Do you think that reminder is going to result in some long-needed reform? I'm hoping so. I think that taking the FAA and air traffic control out of continuing resolutions with Congress would be a really good thing. It's something that we've been supporting for quite some time, and I'd love to see that happen. Air traffic controllers work very hard. They're very talented. We need more of them, and we want to make sure that the system is robust and sound, That's one of the key legs to the stool of what makes the ecosystem work. So Christina, how do volumes look this year? What does demand look like? Well, we had a slow start. We were all expecting things to be a little stronger in the beginning, but we're expecting to be up 10.5% for Thanksgiving this year, which is crazy, because last year was a record year for us. So we're expecting that air travel will remain resilient. People will continue to want to travel, and we're seeing it here locally as well as throughout the country. Have you done a lot of expansions operationally? We have had new air service start. We continue to pursue that all the time, and we just opened a new terminal eight days ago, so that's actually helping us all breathe a little bit better. Yeah, you're seeing some shots of it right there. So that opened on Tuesday the 18th, and thank goodness, because it will help us accommodate this expanded demand that we're expecting this week and into next.

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