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The listening exercises in Business Spotlight Plus (p. 5) are based on the article “A hard landing” (Names & News, p. 9). Here, we provide you with the audio file and transcript.
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A hard landing
Dubuque, Iowa, is an American town that’s big enough to have an airport but too small for national airlines. Three-quarters of America’s 430 commercial airports had fewer flights in 2022 than before the pandemic, but most of that reduction has hit small-market, regional airports, which lost 34 percent of their air traffic, on average.
This is not good news for travelers. It means higher fareTicketpreisfares, less convenience and longer trips to bigger airports. Why is this happening when demand for domestic air travel is high? It has to do with what airline managers call “route economicshier: Wirtschaftlichkeiteconomics.” A pilot shortageKnappheit, Mangelshortage during the pandemic to cause sth.etw. herbeiführencaused salaries to rise, especially among regional pilots. For airlines, the higher costs mean that smaller planes flying to smaller airports have become significantly less profitable.
The effects on local economies could be serious. Molly Grover, president of the Dubuque area chamber of commerceregionale HandelskammerArea Chamber of Commerce, told The New York Times: “A 21st-century company expects air service. The time spent to get to an airport much farther away is a resourceRessourceresource you can’t get back.”