John Devaney said he is so fed up with the University Park Airport that he now drives to Philadelphia to fly to his home in Jacksonville, Fla.
"I think the airport sucks," Devaney (sophomore-division of undergraduate studies) said. "It takes forever and is too small. I stopped flying out of it."
But the airport is now looking to improve, after Penn State received a $175,000 federal grant July 30 to conduct studies at the facility.
"Thank God for the funding, because something needs to be done," Devaney said.
The airport intends to use the money, awarded by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., to determine parking and terminal needs.
William Reynolds, a spokesman for Specter, said federal funding is awarded annually to airports and other transportation authorities that could use some improvement.
The Federal Aviation Administration also awards the University Park Airport about $1.3 million each year for construction and for the airport improvement budget.
The funds enable the airport to hire consulting firms to investigate and report the airport's major needs.
"The funding we just received is not the full amount. We will continue to see more come in throughout the year for more studies," University Park Airport Manager Bob Dannaker said.
"This funding will go to the study to find the needs to increase the parking areas and roads accessing the airport. Then, the funding will be incorporated into increasing the size of the terminals," he added.
Logan Dubois (sophomore-accounting), who flies regularly to Laramie, Wyo., has a different view on the funding.
"I think they need to put all of the federal funding to security," Dubois said. "There is one metal detector and [it] normally takes three times as long to go through than larger airports and it is less efficient. Yet the size of the airport is understandable."
The latest federal grant is not being used for security improvement because it's going toward the hiring for a consulting firm, Dannaker said. But in the future, more state and federal funding will be directed to changing security within the terminals, he added.
