Aviation View Magazine | Volume 1, Issue 4

65 AVIATION VIEW VOLUME 1, ISSUE 4 good restaurant, DeNunzio’s Chophouse, which is very popular. We have put about 300,000 people through the terminal this year in terms of airline passengers, and if you look at people at the restaurant or the rental kiosks, as well, we see probably one million people through the airport each year.” Arnold Palmer Regional has two fixed-base operators. L.J. Aviation is one of the top charter operations in the country. They have about 150 employees and 40-50 percent of those are pilots who fly all over the world. The second is Vee Neal Aviation, they have a couple of Citations that they charter and they also have a very active flight school. In terms of commercial carriers, the airport is well served by Spirit Airlines. The pandemic brought about some changes to the airport facilities, as Arnold Palmer Regional replaced their HVAC with up-to-date filters and added ultraviolet filtration systems. They also increased the cleaning regimen. Whereas the entire airport was sanitized once a week previously, they began to do it between every flight. There was also a surprising positive story that came about…“There was a point last summer,” says Monzo, “when Spirit pretty much went out of business for a period, and we assisted them. We stored nine airbuses here on our old runway, so they had someplace to stay while they were not flying the aircraft. We did not even charge them, but it was great advertising to have nine aircraft, which all said Spirit on the side of them, parked at our little airport. It looked pretty impressive. It was ARNOLD PALMER REGIONAL A I RPORT