I do want to welcome my colleagues and staff and guests in attendance.

Councilmember Castillo is here, Councilmember Alcorn is here, Councilmember Ramirez is here.

We also have staff from Vice Mayor Pro Tim Peck's office from Councilmember Cayman's office, from Councilmember Martinez's office, and also Councilmember Flickinger's office.

Thank you all for being here.

This meeting is open to the public and is being held in person and virtually.

We're also broadcasting live on Houston HTV.

Council members and staff, if you'll just hold your questions if you're online and you want to put those questions in the chat pod, you can do that.

We do have one member of the public who is signed up to speak today.

If you are here and you'd like to sign up to speak, there is a sign-up sheet at the front table to your right.

Public speakers will have a chance to speak at the conclusion of our presentation.

Any questions that may not be answered today can definitely be emailed to our office at District K at Houston TX.gov and we can forward those responses back from the respective departments.

Also want to uh welcome staff from Councilmember Jackson's office to the meeting today.

Thank you for being here.

We do have two presentations today.

Our first presentation will be from our Houston Airport System Director, Jim Cesniak, and he will be presenting on the Houston Airport system, giving us some um great updates.

We're very hopeful that the weather won't cause any problems for us uh this weekend.

So uh director Cesniak, thank you for being here.

If you are ready, we are ready to hear from you.

Councilmember Thomas's staff is online.

Also want to recommend recognize staff from Councilmember Thomas's office who has joined us online.

Hello, Director.

How are you doing?

It's great to be here today.

Um, you know, it's been a while since I've been here, so I figured it'd be a good time to come in and do a presentation, let you know what's going on at the airport, what we're doing, um, and then also uh we've got a couple of items that are gonna be coming before you in the near future, and so we want to kind of give you an update on what that entails so you can ask questions because they're they're uh big dollar amounts.

So uh next slide, please.

Um and then you know, just generally what we've been doing at the airport um from a passenger um experience side of the house so we can see what's going on.

Next slide, please.

Um next slide.

So uh again, good growth this year, particularly uh international.

Um so we just got our numbers in and completed for the calendar year of 2025.

Um international growth was up, um, which was very positive considering we just opened the new international terminal.

Um and then also our air cargo numbers were up and very strong, so we're very excited about that because again it's a little little known part of the the the airport, but it's about 13 billion dollars in annual economic impact to the to the region for the cargo operation that happens at the airport.

On the domestic side, we were down a little bit.

Um that had to do uh with a couple of factors.

So uh number one, uh about this time last year we were closed for a day because of the snowstorm.

Um so that has an impact on our numbers.

And then we've seen some fluctuations in the domestic market.

We've got some airlines that are up and some airlines that are down.

Um so again, you know, United and Frontier at the airports have been up pretty good, and then uh Spirit Airlines with their bankruptcy challenges has been down at the airport.

Um, and then Southwest, you know, system-wide has been doing some reorganization of their system, and so they were down a little bit.

But that was a universal thing across their network, they've been down, and then they've got a challenge with their aircraft right now.

They're uh waiting for Boeing to get their uh 737 7 maxes certified.

So we're hearing that that that will hopefully happen sometime this year and allow Southwest to continue to grow um as they continue to get airplanes uh and into their fleet again.

Next slide, please.

Um again, just talking about that international growth.

Um, you know, again, we saw a lot.

Uh you'll see the boat it bolded uh destinations.

Those are a lot of new destinations or additional competition on routes, so we're always you know trying to make sure that we grow the pie um number one, but then also having a competitive market here.

Um so we're very proud of some of these new destinations that we had.

Um and then we're gonna continue to add you know domestic destinations too.

I was just informed today about another international um two more international flights that we're gonna get, but I can't announce them yet, so you'll you'll have to follow our Twitter.

It'll be it'll be on there in a couple days once it's uh public with the airline.

Next slide, please.

Uh again, talking about that cargo and how important it is to the region.

Um you saw that we're again record setting over here, saw a lot of new growth with uh again the semiconductors, particularly that are coming in uh to the market because of again what's happening here in Houston, but also you know, we find feed things that are happening in the Austin region, um, and then also feeding things that are happening in the San Antonio region.

So a lot of good stuff going on in there, and then we've got obviously the significant operations by FedEx, UPS, and Prime Air, which is the Amazon Air wing.

So all the the things you order on Amazon, and a lot of it flies in and out of the airport too.

So uh being seeing strong numbers there, and again, um just recently announced that we got a second frequency from Silkway Airways, they're going direct uh from here to uh Baku, Azerbaijan.

Um so uh it's one of those unique locations that not people ought to think about, but uh that's uh you know primarily the oil business.

So we send a lot of the stuff that's produced here in Houston from an oil perspective over on that airplane uh to get into the markets over there where they're doing a lot of oil production.