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Nohyping, You're leaving the conversation of ticket influences and demand on single flights and are now talking much about O'hare.
I would urge to be much more careful and check some assumptions.
ATL is not 'unlimited.' We have had to proactively rebuild our airport to be where we are now. Most others in the country did ad-hoc expansions leading to multiple terminals and concourses with poor gate access for planes. ATL is actually built on a site smaller than O'hare. However, it was built for efficiency and we still have room for a 6th parallel runway and some new gates, although they will come with increasing costs per gate than previous expansions. One problem we have is growth has is with land bounded in development, but the original terrain is also hilly. It will take a great deal of dirt to level off the remaining land. When we built our 5th runway, the largest cost was dirt moving operation to level the terrain.
Atlanta rebuilt the airport from the ground up in the 1970s. The old terminal and some runways were demo'd, while a whole new terminal was rebuilt from scratch. The design called for parallel runways only that could work in close spaced pairs and it called for centralized mid-field terminal concourses that run perpendicular to each other. It has ended up being one of the most -efficient- airports in the U.S. We also have a secure zone where all flights can connect without people changing Terminals, including international flights.
Our International Terminal and both concourses with customs integrated are already built to allow easy connections to domestic flights across all airlines and major alliances without a formal terminal switch. We never had the Terminal 5 problems bus/re-security problems ORD has. I've done connections there a few times. It was never fun. Now JFK, Newark, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, SFO, and LAX suffer these same problems. It isn't uncommon for US airports.
Houston can generate horribly long walks, but it is possible. LAX has an awkward underground hallway that can be used to help travellers switch on the secured side. MIA also dumps all international travelers into the unsecured side to go through security with everyone else. Miserable experience. There is no independent security check between customs and the domestic gates for interntional inbound passengers.
Some airports just bunch different alliances together in the same terminal to try to cut down on traffic needed to switch between the terminals, but it is never perfect.
The 'key' for Atlanta was the location mixed with the ability to rebuild the airport from scratch to be efficient as possible. The old terminal layout was very similar to Charlotte today.
The basic design premise of ATL is currently being used in the partial modernization of O'hare right now. It was also used in concept of the building of Denver. The design concept has been used in parts for rebuilds and expansions in LAX, JFK, Heathrow, Detroit, and Seoul
O'hare also didn't retake the title from ATL, because on average the domestic flights were smaller on places with fewer seats. Delta flies larger planes with more seats on average. The Atlanta area also has a strong network of local airports and ATL sees fewer fewer general aviation flights, in comparison. I suspect some of this will change with O'hare's rebuilding. Delta can get away with the larger planes, because they can more easily attract more people from more regions to connect onto each outgoing flight.
The second issue is ATL has a great location. Look at how population and population centers are distributed in the country. O'hare stays to the north of most of the population. I think you will find the Southeast and South Central US are more heavily populated than you realized. That part of this country covers a really large amount of land, much of what is subject of rapid growth.
ATL had a phrase that you can access the home airport of 80% of the country's population within a 2 hours flight. No other place in the country can claim that. (Note: wheels up to wheels down, doesn't include tax time, ATC delays, or buffers airlines put on the flight.... just simple the raw flight time unimpeded).
The reason for this is we can get most of the major population centers, not on the west coast, in just under a 2 hour flight. You can draw a circle and it almost perfectly passed through: Chicago, The Texas Triangle, South Florida, Detroit, and the Boston-NYC-DC corridor. This includes 8 of the top 10 largest cities in the country. Most of the small to large metros in those regions stay within that circle.
Basically said Atlanta is half way between NYC and DFW/Houston and half way between Chicago and Miami. We are the top 10 metro that is stuck in the middle between most of the other top 10 metros.
Now O'hare will soon complete the rebuilding of its runway and will operate as 6 parallel runway airport and should give them some considerable efficiencies. They remain a good connecting airport for the Midwest and between the heavily populated Northeast and the West Coast, but the key for them will still be a mixture of demand and plane choice on how the airlines fly to all of the small to mid-size markets they connect to.
It's also a smaller city and not Beijing or Shanghai. Then again in the US it's not necessarily the JFK or LAX that are the busiest, or even Ohare which I believe took the title a few years back. I also think Istabul's new airport is pretty close as well.
Mexico City had planned to build a new airport that could have taken the busiest title one day, but they scrapped that zahah hadid designed mega project due to the lousy soil (ancient lake bed) that it was to be built on.
I think Atlanta needs a small 2nd commercial airport evenutally because over 3 million people live in the Northern Suburbs and it's still growing. Delta could always muscle in some gates of its own, but of course they don't want any discount carriers stealing their business.
That competiion would be great for us consumers though.
I think ATL airport is designed very well for an airport with over 200 gates. The straight line concourses are easy for people to navigate and the renovations look great in Delta's concourses.
My only gripe is the low ceilings in the concourses. I wish in their renovations they could have popped up the roof and added some windows or skylights over the walkways.
But Delta's gates and the new backlit terminal signage inside (outside airport signs suck) are gorgeous. And I like the exterior dark gray paint job too, much better than the beige.
Mexico City had planned to build a new airport that could have taken the busiest title one day, but they scrapped that zahah hadid designed mega project due to the lousy soil (ancient lake bed) that it was to be built on.
I think Atlanta needs a small 2nd commercial airport evenutally because over 3 million people live in the Northern Suburbs and it's still growing. Delta could always muscle in some gates of its own, but of course they don't want any discount carriers stealing their business.
That competiion would be great for us consumers though.
I think ATL airport is designed very well for an airport with over 200 gates. The straight line concourses are easy for people to navigate and the renovations look great in Delta's concourses.
My only gripe is the low ceilings in the concourses. I wish in their renovations they could have popped up the roof and added some windows or skylights over the walkways.
But Delta's gates and the new backlit terminal signage inside (outside airport signs suck) are gorgeous. And I like the exterior dark gray paint job too, much better than the beige.
I agree, and wish we could afford to have concourses like Denver. They're spacious and beautiful, but it would cost a fortune and we simply don't have the room. Overall though, the changes and improvements are fantastic.
The Mexico City airport wasn't about them taking the title. They were planning for 130m passengers 50 years from now and they were at 50m in 2019. 50 years from now there will be a number of other airports beyond 130m.
I'm actually nervous about Mexico City's airports. Mexico City's airport doubled in passengers in the last 10 years pre-covid.
Their existing 1 is alright, but it is already too small and overcrowded for the traffic it has. It is extremely constrained with no room for growth and the two terminals are completely disconnected.
It has 2 runways and only about 60 jetways. They frequently rely on tarmac parking. There is really no more room to add a runway and they were pretty much beyond physical capacity.
Their new airport was going to have land for 6 runways and had a a single central terminal complex for all flights and be able to build out to room for 130m passengers in 50 years. They actually started construction and were probably 25% of the way into the cost of building that new airport. Much of the foundation is in place for the building and they were half way into building the foundation of two runways after leveling the land.
That whole airport project gets cut to a populist political spending backlash over some poor cost estimates.
Then they plan a terminal 3 at the original airport. That gets cut because it doesn't solve the airspace problems at the main airport and everyone realizes terminal 3 won't work.
So now they are building 2 runways and a new terminal complex at military air base further out of town and are planning on operating 2 main airports with 1 at a completely new site. It has their air force on-site, there is limited space for future growth, the 2 airport concept doesn't allow for good growth for their hub operators, and the international, Latin American, and North American air transport associations recommended against that 2nd airport.
In the meantime it would've been cheaper to have gone ahead and finished their original plan for a large new airport with the cost overruns, than building a second airport at their military air base. That is also without the cost of needed future upgrades to their terminals at their existing airport that they will not long abandon in the future.
They're a complete mess down there politically. The only thing I will say is they are building amazingly fast. They are building in 2-3 years what would take us a decade.
I agree, and wish we could afford to have concourses like Denver. They're spacious and beautiful, but it would cost a fortune and we simply don't have the room. Overall though, the changes and improvements are fantastic.
I agree. Tall ceilings are nice. I was really happy they added windows and raised the ceilings on the outside near the waiting areas. They found a way to get more natural light into the place. That was a large improvement over the way it use to be.
The next big concern I think is the holding room capacity in Concourse D. Sure it handles smaller planes, but with quicker turnover many people still use the concourse. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to fix that.
Some other significant challenges to building a second major airport for the Atlanta region have included:
> The long-held opposition of Atlanta and Georgia corporate behemoth Delta Air Lines to the development of a second major airport
> Intense, overriding opposition by local residents to the development of a second major airport in almost every area that it may be proposed to go in, because the of fears of the jet fumes, increased noise and increased development pressures that likely might would come with the development of a second major airport
> The frequent refusal of Georgia state government to often adequately fund various forms of multimodal transportation infrastructure, including air transportation infrastructure.
With that said, there actually has been at least a couple of so-far unsuccessful attempts to develop a second major airport for the Atlanta region over the past 50 years or so.
The first unsuccessful attempt to develop a second major Atlanta region airport came back in the 1970’s when the City of Atlanta bought a large tract of undeveloped forest land up in the Appalachian foothills of North Georgia in Dawson County with the probable intention of maybe one day developing the tract into a second major airport north of the city where most of the development was expected to occur in future decades.
But the continued opposition of Delta Air Lines (who has a huge voice in City of Atlanta politics) to the CoA spending resources on a second airport, as well as intense opposition by local residents and national environmental groups have effectively prevented the development of that CoA-owned land which remains a beloved Blue Ridge/Appalachian foothills forest wilderness nature preserve for the foreseeable future (Dawson Forest - City of Atlanta Tract).
The second so-far unsuccessful attempt to develop a second major Atlanta region airport has come in Atlanta’s western outer suburbs and exurbs with the development of Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport south off of US-278/GA-6 Rockmart Highway in the middle of a forest wilderness area in western Paulding County.
The Paulding airport, which appears to have been developed by Paulding County and outer-suburban/exurban Northwest metro Atlanta real estate development interests with the intent of becoming a second major airport for the Atlanta region, is in operation but so far has yet to gain momentum as the second major airport that it seems to have been intended to be.
Delta Air Lines has been vocal in blocking any increased public funding that might help to grow and expand the airport’s operations, and local residents have unsupportive of the local business community’s efforts to generate increased investment in the airport and plans to develop the wilderness, some of which is federally-protected wilderness area in the Paulding Forest and Sheffield Wildlife Management Areas.
But as of right now, the airfield which was and/or is at least intended to be a potential second major airport (the aforementioned Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport) is at least open and operating, while admittedly currently being an extremely long way from fulfilling those goals of actually becoming a second major airport for the greater Atlanta region.
There have even been multiple past threads here in the City-Data Atlanta Forum that have talked about the attempts to develop the Paulding Airport site into a second major airport for the Atlanta region.
It's inevitable that Atlanta metro gets another major airport at some point with the current population boom and companies relocating here. It is likely to be in Cherokee or Forsyth County not Paulding though.
It's inevitable that Atlanta metro gets another major airport at some point with the current population boom and companies relocating here. It is likely to be in Cherokee or Forsyth County not Paulding though.
Fat chance any of those areas allow a major commercial airport either.
Fat chance any of those areas allow a major commercial airport either.
Its eventually going to happen. Will be much easier for the northern burb folks than going all the way to Hartsfield–Jackson. I don't think it will be met with the resistance you are implying.
Its eventually going to happen. Will be much easier for the northern burb folks than going all the way to Hartsfield–Jackson. I don't think it will be met with the resistance you are implying.
It will never happen in any of our lifetimes, particularly in Cherokee or Forsyth.
Its eventually going to happen. Will be much easier for the northern burb folks than going all the way to Hartsfield–Jackson. I don't think it will be met with the resistance you are implying.
My response:
Quote:
Originally Posted by JMatl
It will never happen in any of our lifetimes, particularly in Cherokee or Forsyth.
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