Harry Reid International Airport’s Post

Transcript

And was that the most significant event that affected our airport in all the years you can recall? I mean, we shut down. It was an amazing time. We shut down for how long? For three days. So the airspace actually did shut down first time ever, right? So therefore airports had to to shut down. So when you ask if that's a significant event in aviation, in airport operations. Looking at that silo, my answer is yes. So I was at the airport, I was deputy director. The the director was stuck out of town and at a convention. So it is the first time ever we had to shut down the airport. You know we never lock our doors, right? And we had to get everybody out. Um, the town was pretty full. September is a very hefty month for us here in Las Vegas. We had to work with the convention authority, who is very, very helpful to get the guests back to rooms. Now that worked because no one could come in, right? So right that no one was traveling and then we literally had to recertify the airport. So that was another first because. That didn't happen and it it took a whole team at that time, FA or excuse me, TSA was not born. So we had what was called FAA regulatory. We had two people assigned to this airport because we, you know, we were never a threat. Airport Las Vegas was never, you know, part. Part of of that worry. So didn't see my kids, her husband for, you know, four days. Yeah. And we, we just got a team together, work together and and we knew we had to be, we had to reopen quickly because, you know, at that time we had 90,000 rooms right when that happened. And, you know, so we had, you know, 120,000 people that needed to get home. Yeah. And, you know. Proud to say again with my team, just phenomenal. We were the first large airport to reopen because we had to well there and and yeah, we had to because people were stuck here. And as one casino owner told me at the time during 9/11, after about 3 days, everybody was broke. All the all the gamblers that came to Las Vegas ran out of money so they had to get home. They couldn't continue to gamble and. I'm stuck in the middle with you.