COLONIE — The Albany International Airport Authority released financial data this week that showed declining income and increased expenses amid difficult economic times during the first half of 2008.

For the first six months, the airport reported a loss of $1.3 million. Airport Authority Chief Financial Officer Dwight Hadley said the authority is obligated to reserve $1 million of that loss as part of its obligations to its bond holders. The rest of the loss came from decreased revenues and increased expenses.

The Airport Authority reported $18.9 million in revenues from January through June, 2.6 percent less than anticipated in the 2008 budget.

“What we see happening is the business traveler is generally continuing fairly close to what would appear to be normal but the leisure is falling off and the general aviation traffic is falling off,” Airport Authority Chief Financial Officer Dwight Hadley said. “We’re also experiencing a decrease in operations of commercial aircraft at this airport. We collect landing fees. We’re operating at 70 commercial flights [per day] as of June, compared to 83 a year ago.”

Airport Authority officials attribute some of the dropoff in flights to the loss of CommutAir in 2007, which had been using Albany as a hub for its Continental Connection operations. Hadley said some of the decline is the result of many airlines cutting back flights due to falling revenues and increased costs. He said Albany International Airport hopes regional flights will increase when Cape Air begins operations in the fall.

Authority spokesman Doug Myers said sales of rental car services out of the airport are up 1.6 percent year over year, translating to a 2 percent increase in revenues to the authority from rental car companies operating out of the airport.

“That tells you business people are still flying,” Myers said.

The number of vehicles parked in the airport parking lots was down 6.2 percent from the first half of 2007, but revenues from parking were down only 0.2 percent because of long-term parking charge rate increases.

Officials said airport expenses have grown more than anticipated. The Airport Authority budgeted for $14.1 million in expenses for the first two quarters but has incurred $14.3 million in expenses.

“The biggest part of [the increased expenses] goes back to the type of winter we had in the first quarter. Although we didn’t have a lot of snow, we had a lot of ice, so we spent a lot of money cleaning the runways and related facilities,” Hadley said.

The Airport Authority has initiated a hiring freeze to help cut costs, Myers said. He said the Airport Authority’s finance committee will meet before the end of the month to review other actions to save cash.

“We have been doing this since [Sept. 11, 2001], making periodic fiscal reviews throughout the year to see where we stand against figures we developed a year before,” Myers said. “We still have time to make some significant corrections to the bottom line here at the airport. One thing we’re striving for is to maintain the revenue sharing we have been engaged with our airlines since the authority took over. If the airlines work to maintain or reduce costs throughout the year ... if we have funds in the budget at the end of the year, we [split those evenly] with the airlines.”