Aviation View | April 2021

77 AVIATION VIEW APRIL 2021 YAK IMA A I R TERMINAL – MCALL I STER F I ELD Oshkosh Airport Products apparatus accounting for about $761,000 and about $210,000 in auxiliary equipment making up the rest. When the rig was delivered, Oshkosh Airport Products personnel came out to provide a tutorial for the Yakima Fire Department as well as Yakima Air Terminal-McAllister Field employees. “It’s a wonderful piece of machinery,” Peterson says. “The FAA typically requires you to replace your firefighting apparatuses about every 15 years. And our last fire apparatus that we received was about 2005. So it’s perfect timing; we’re on schedule to make sure that we meet emergency response demands for all aircraft that use the airport.” Like other airports over the last year, Yakima Air Terminal-McAllister Field had to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic. Activity slowed, but never stopped. The lowest point was in April 2020 when only 276 people flew out of the airport. Things have increased about 800 percent since then, reaching about 3,000 departing passengers a month. Meeting the challenges of the pandemic was a collaborative effort between the airport, private contractors, airlines, and Transportation Security Administration. New safety measures for passengers begin with vehicle parking. A private contractor manages the airport’s parking facilities. Prior to the pandemic, the contractor installed pre-pay kiosks where passengers would enter their parking stall number, the number of days they would be gone, and then pay with a credit card. That was a lot of touching, so the contractor disabled those kiosks and put up signs directing people to either call or use a smartphone application to pay for parking. Security checkpoints have been modified to minimize contact between individuals, as well. Now, passengers can scan boarding passes and personal identification documents themselves. It’s a similar situation at the boarding area, where passengers now scan their own ticket instead of handing