Airport Capacity Lags Behind Flyer’s Demand

A story in Aviation Week reports on an FAA study that finds that 14 airports and eight metropolitan areas in the US will need new capacity to handle the anticipated growth in air traffic through 2025.

We have been blogging about the many protests and court injunctions that are raised each time airport planners propose expanding runways and building new parking lots. It seems that almost every one of these projects has determined foes. Yet the fact is–we need much more capacity to serve a public that is determined to fly. Here is a snip from the report:

“US Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters lauded Atlanta for investing aggressively to keep pace with air travel by opening its fifth runway, a new tower and taxiway and construction of a new international terminal. And while that expansion has put Atlanta in good stead in the short term, in the longer term, “air service will suffer if this region doesn’t find new ways to handle growing demand and begin looking at building a new airport,” she said.

FAA has been working with San Diego for years, as Lindberg Field is a single-runway airport with no room to build and reaching the limits of its capacity. The agency notes that Las Vegas is also running out of capacity but has identified Ivanpah as the site for a future airport.

Work continues on finding a south suburban replacement airport for Chicago as Midway will have exhausted its capacity by 2005. The completion of the O’Hare Modernization Program will help augment capacity for the region, but a new southern airport will be a needed asset.”