Time traveling through Hartsfield-Jackson’s Concourse D expansion

Regular travelers through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport know change is a constant.

But there are some changes people who travel less frequently should know about, including the expansion of Concourse D, parking and at the main security checkpoint.

If you’ve taken a walk through the north side of the airport’s Concourse D recently, you’ve been on a journey through time.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International has spent years preparing to widen the concourse, and the project is well underway.

Look one way, and you’ll see the narrowest concourse at the airport, unable to handle bigger planes. On a busy day, it is arguably a trigger for those with claustrophobia.

Look to the other, and you’ll see the future. Bigger windows. Better lighting. More seating. Very big bathrooms.

The airport is about halfway through a nearly seven-year project to expand Concourse D’s width by about 40 feet, with higher ceilings and new restrooms.

The $1.4 billion project is being done in a modular way to limit how many gates Delta Air Lines loses access to at a time. The airline rejected a plan to speed up the project, at the expense of more gate space.

The process also means that while construction is still underway, passengers have the chance to glimpse the past and the future, at the same time.

A view of the older gates at Concourse D at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The concourse has long been the airport's narrowest. The $1.4 billion project is set to last until 2029, and is expanding a few gates at a time in order to limit airline disruption. (Emma Hurt/AJC)

The next batch of gates will reopen in September. After the north side, will come the south. The project is set to last until 2029.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday the airline brought the idea to the airport years ago. “It was such a well-positioned, small facility with a need to continue to put a big investment,” he said.

The majority of the costs will fall to Delta, he said, as the airport’s majority carrier.

Step one was building out the new, large Sky Club on the roof of the Concourse’s center point, which opened this spring.

“We knew one of the most important things that the airport needed was more lounge space, a better club and bigger club.”

That’s why they started with the Sky Club, he said. “And it’s at the central part of the project. So we’ve already opened that, and we’ll start to build gates out as we go.”

But, as he acknowledged, “we can’t take too many gates out of service at once. That airport is full.”

New modules are built on the edge of the airport and rolled into place overnight, then opened a few at a time — in something of an intricate industrial ballet.

Bastian said it’s “going well.”

While the construction strategy is a “novel concept,” it’s still somewhat easier than other airport projects the company has undertaken, he said, like building “an airport on top of an airport while you’re operating an airport” at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

Where to wait and park

Airport officials would really like people to use the “Park & Wait” lot they rebranded in May.

The parking area formerly known as the “cell phone waiting lot” moved in 2023 when its longtime South terminal location was taken over by a new fire station.

But Atlantans are still double parking on airport road shoulders as they wait for pickups.

Officials are worried folks think they have to pay for the Park & Wait lot.

But the lot is free — and it has WiFi.

Main security checkpoint elevators

There’s another change at Hartsfield-Jackson to be aware of, and that’s at the main security checkpoint of the airport’s Domestic Terminal.