New York (AFP)

In the doldrums of air transport, the governor of New York celebrated the progress of a vast modernization project at La Guardia airport on Wednesday, saying he was certain that the sector would rebound.

"Are we going to need airports? Yes, we are going to need airports," said Governor Andrew Cuomo, opening the new terminal B at Queens Airport, which will open to the public on Saturday.

"The planes will fly, the cars will run, the trains too, life goes on post-Covid", continued the elected democrat, who advocates a revival of major infrastructure projects in the face of the recession unprecedented since the 1930s hitting the United States.

"There is no doubt that air travel will recover, the question is not + if + but + when +", also assured Rick Cotton, executive director of Port Authority, the public establishment which manages the airports of the New York region.

He praised the size of the new terminal - 50% larger than the old -, improved cleaning operations and dispensers of hydroalcoholic gel in quantity as many measures that will ensure "the safety and health of passengers in the post world -Covid ".

"We needed this," said Cuomo, as New York was hit hard by the pandemic that killed more than 21,000 people. "We needed to see the light at the end of the tunnel (...), need to see New York standing, brilliant, need to remember that it is a great place".

Begun in 2015 and scheduled to be completed in a year and a half, the modernization of La Guardia, at a total cost of $ 8 billion, is one of the governor's emblematic projects.

La Guardia, opened in 1939, was described as a "third world" airport by Joe Biden, then vice-president, when the project was launched in 2015.

The airport saw some 30 million passengers pass in 2018, mainly on domestic flights.

The airline industry has contracted drastically due to containment measures due to the coronavirus, forcing large American companies like United to reduce their flights by 90%.

In April, at the peak of the epidemic, global traffic "bottomed out", down 94% from a year ago, according to the International Air Transport Association (Iata). It predicts a drop of more than half of the sector's revenues in 2020.

© 2020 AFP