Juneau’s city-owned airport was briefly at risk of an emergency closure as its fleet of Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting trucks faced maintenance issues that could have shut down air traffic if all vehicles broke down.
That’s according to Juneau International Airport’s new manager, Andres Delgado, who spoke to the Juneau Assembly about the situation during a joint finance committee meeting Wednesday evening.
He said two out of three specialized emergency ARFF vehicles needed repairs in recent weeks, which left only one in service. That meant the airport couldn’t accept some larger planes from coming to Juneau, including some Alaska Airlines jets. He said there would have been much larger impacts if all trucks were out of commission.
“What that meant for the community, for a brief moment, was that had that truck — the remaining truck — gotten a flat tire, we would have been at what’s called an ‘ARFF zero’ status, which means no air carrier service to Juneau,” he said.
