Syracuse Hancock International Airport is still covered in tarps after eight months of construction with no end in sight. Construction began in September 2017 with a projected date of completion falling in October of this year. Sarah Campbell ‘19, does not foresee this construction being done by October. “Based on what we saw, there was no ceiling, no floor – you couldn’t access 50 percent of that airport,” she says.
Campbell had recently gone home to Phoenix, Arizona, for the weekend and flew into Syracuse to return to SLU. Due to Transportation Services protocols, Campbell remained at Syracuse Airport for several hours awaiting another student’s arrival. In this time spent at the airport, Campbell observed passengers confused by the many makeshift signs poised around the airport. In several instances, she witnessed people come up the escalators, look at the signs, then return back downstairs, only to come back up the escalator very irritated. “The signs were not very helpful at all,” said Campbell.
Tonia Friot, the transportation coordinator here at St. Lawrence, says that her drivers have needed to make adjustments in their trips to Syracuse especially in terms of parking. The parking lot where St. Lawrence transportation vehicles used to park is no longer a parking area, which resulted in one driver receiving a ticket for parking in that area.
Syracuse Hancock International Airport has suspended student media requests while the airport is under construction so they were not available for comment. Campbell thinks this raises some questions because there must be some problems or delays that they aren’t willing to talk about. This denial to accept interviews from student reporters causes people to jump conclusions about what airport officials are hiding.
According to Friot, transportation services has driven 1,416 students to the Syracuse airport in this academic year so it would make sense why the airport would suspend student media requests. Friot says that based on the large number of students SLU regularly transports to Syracuse, other schools in the area are probably doing the same. “If you think about all the college students that use the airport, that’s a large group,” she says, and because of this, the college student demographic is probably who the airport would field most of their complaints from about the construction.
Recently, Campbell has been flying out of Watertown International Airport rather than Syracuse because there is “not as much hassle going in and out of it,” she says. Hopefully this construction will be done soon because if this pattern continues, Syracuse Airport may begin losing business.