Airport Experience News Fall 2022

Right: Des Moines International Airport has been eyeing a new terminal for nearly a decade. Now, with enough funding in place to start the project, the vision can begin to reach reality.

In announcing the awards for fiscal year 2022 last summer, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the investment “couldn’t have come at a more urgent time. “Right now, more people than ever are relying on air travel to see their loved ones and move goods around the country and the world,” he said in an early July speech in Los Angeles. “And we’ve seen airports and airlines struggling to meet that extraordinary level of demand.” Buttigieg noted the need to modernize airports to ensure they are prepared not only for the short-term demand spike but to serve passengers over the coming decades. More than 80 airports received infrastructure grants earlier this year, from nearly $50 million to help fund a new concourse at Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), to $24 million for the new Terminal 1 at San Diego International Airport (SAN) to $5 million, to Texarkana Regional Airport (TXK) to ensure completion of a terminal expansion currently underway. Most grants came in under $15 million While the individual funding grants make up a small portion of the cost of each project, they’ve been helpful in pushing projects forward. Below are four airport projects that have been aided by the infrastructure law. New Configuration, Expansion At BOS Boston-Logan International Airport (BOS) is hip deep in major capital projects that will streamline passenger movements, ease crowding at the curb and at the terminal gates and modernize and expand facilities. The expansion and renovation program started well before the pandemic hit in 2020. The crisis forced executives to rethink some aspects of the project, but ultimately the bulk of the planning stayed on track.

“As you can imagine, as we were going into COVID we had to make some tough decisions of ‘go or no-go’,” says Dan Gallagher, director of aviation finances for BOS. “And really, we had to make the decision to go. For various reasons we knew the demand was going to be coming back. It was the right decision to continue the project for a whole host of reasons.” BOS received $62 million from the infrastructure bill, a sliver of the cost for its current capital program. BOS’ Terminal B-C Connector project was finalized earlier this year, providing new and renovated facilities in Terminal C, a new post-security connection to Terminal B, a consolidated security checkpoint, expanded food and retail concessions and passenger amenities and other amenities. An ongoing project at BOS is the B to C roadways project that will revamp the terminal roadways to minimize backups and get passengers to and from the terminals more quickly. Waiting in the wings is a Terminal E, with plans for a roughly 320,000 square-foot building addition and renovations to the existing building. Gallagher says flexibility is key going forward. “The fact that we’re connecting those [B and C] terminals, it gives us such greater flexibility for both the passenger and for the airlines to actually fly what the market really demands,” he says, noting that the prior layout without connectivity left the airport with minimal flexibility. The Terminal E expansion and renovation was originally scheduled to be well underway by now, as the airport had

decided pre-pandemic to undertake Phase 2 of its capital plans concurrently with Phase 1. The pandemic changed that approach. Now, Gallagher says, some minor work has been completed, but the airport has decided to “value engineer or descope as appropriate.” Phase 2 will be triggered when the demand warrants, he says. Terminal E is BOS’ international terminal, but Gallagher says the cyclical nature of international operations and heavy demand for domestic operations call for a flexible approach. “Some of the projects we’re adding at Terminal E are going to allow us to operate some domestic f lights out of an international terminal instead of building on more domestic gates,” he says. “It’s really about flexibility and being responsive and adaptive, because we get a lot of curve balls, and if the infrastructure isn’t there you can’t do a lot.” Long-Awaited Terminal For DSM Officials at Des Moines International Airport (DSM) have been planning for a new terminal for a decade or more, and have been scrambling for the money to make it happen for as many years. The project, at an estimated cost of $770 million, is finally in the design stage and some enabling projects are already underway. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Fund contributed $5 million to the design process, a drop in the bucket compared to overall need but welcome nevertheless for an airport that has been working every

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