Nearly a year after Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport opened its new international terminal, it is already planning for the next expansion — which could mean more concourses and a sixth runway.
Forecasts show the Atlanta airport expects millions more travelers to fill the terminal, concourses, roads and garages. Last year, more than 95 million travelers passed through Hartsfield-Jackson, keeping it the world’s busiest airport. And by 2031, the passenger counts are expected to reach 120 million.
The Atlanta airport’s $5 million master plan study on how it will develop over the next 20 years has already come up with some findings: Without expansion, the Plane Train people-mover in the terminal will eventually become overcrowded during busy periods, airport parking at the domestic terminal will reach capacity, security lines will be taxed, the airport will be short on gates and crowded runways will lead to longer flight delays.
“This says if nothing changes, here’s the problems,” said Louis Miller, Hartsfield-Jackson’s general manager.
The airport master plan study comes in the wake of a study by the airport completed in 2011 that showed there is no viable location for a second commercial airport for metro Atlanta.
The next step for the airport is to come up with proposals for how it will meet the projected demand on its own.
“We’ve identified certain shortfalls in certain facilities, and we’ll start to identify alternatives to address those shortfalls,” said Hartsfield-Jackson planner Tom Nissalke, who is director of environmental and technical services.
Among the major projects to be considered are a south concourse or more concourses to the east, and a sixth runway. That’s expected to call for the closure and/or relocation of hotels and other businesses that sit in a parcel at the southwest corner of the airport, and a new runway is also likely to generate protests from area residents concerned about noise.
In Clayton County, where most of the airport and its neighbors to the south and east sit, Commission Chairman Jeff Turner said the airport “has already impacted our county in some negative ways.”
“We don’t want it to be another situation where it’s a detriment,” Turner said. “My biggest concern is how is this going to impact Clayton County, and is it going to benefit Clayton County?”
It’s not unusual for major airport expansions to stoke criticism.
“Someone needs to make the political decision: Do you want to strangle your airport, or do you want it to continue to be an engine of growth?” said Bill Fife, a New York-based airport consultant.
Parking
Parking is the single biggest moneymaker at the airport, generating more than $114 million in revenue in fiscal year 2011, according to the airport’s most recent annual report. It’s also among the most urgent needs in the airport’s long-term plans. That’s a familiar issue to any traveler who has circled around the garage in search of a spot.
But the airport’s needs for more parking are uneven — some lots have more than enough space while others already fall short of demand. The airport, which is interested in attracting more customers for its lucrative parking business, calculates demand by including drivers who park at off-airport lots but would prefer to park on the airport.
The airport added parking with the opening of its new international terminal last May. The international park-ride garage is expected to suffice through 2021, while the hourly parking garage will offer enough space at least until 2031, according to the master plan study.
But on the other side of the airport at the domestic terminal, daily and economy parking areas could already use more spaces. Based on demand estimates, the airport is short by 2,000 in the daily parking areas and 1,470 in the economy lots.
And the need will only increase. If no parking is added, the airport will be 15,500 spaces short of its estimated demand by 2031.
There are possibilities for expanded parking. The airport in late 2009 moved rental car operations from lots surrounding the main terminal to a remote rental car center connected by a people-mover train, opening up space for development.
Along with planning for more parking, the airport is also considering how to ease the intersection of cars and people crossing the roads from the parking garage to the terminal.
Security checkpoints
One of the most unpredictable choke points for travelers is security lines — where the waits can be 20 minutes or longer due to security screening issues such as staffing.
The addition of the international terminal security checkpoint helped alleviate the pressure, though the airport went through some growing pains last year when early reassignments of security screeners to the international terminal led some waits to grow longer.
And lines still persist, particularly during busy travel periods in the summer and over holidays.
The crowds are expected to grow beyond the capacity of the available security checkpoint lanes in the domestic terminal by 2031. Demand for the security queues leading up to the ID check areas at security checkpoints is expected to exceed capacity by 2021.
“We have plenty of checkpoint lanes, but we have problems with queuing,” Miller said.
Terminal people-mover train
As the airport expands with more concourses, one area that grows more crowded is the terminal people-mover train.
The train, which has 99.4 percent reliability, is an essential form of transportation within the two-terminal, seven-concourse airport.
“When it breaks down, it gets very, very crowded,” Nissalke said.
The potential to increase people-mover capacity affects not only crowds on the trains, but it also guides the potential for expansion with additional concourses: Can the existing people-mover line handle the thousands of additional passengers that would need to get to farther-flung concourses?
The time between trains could be shortened, and airport planners will study the possibility of extending the line beyond the endpoint. That would allow more space for a faster turnaround as trains prepare to head back in the other direction — reducing the amount of waiting time for passengers on the train before arrival at baggage claim.
Gates
With a total of 206 gates, including 12 added in the international terminal’s Concourse F that opened last year, the airport has more gates than it needs through 2016. That’s partly because airlines including Delta Air Lines are replacing smaller regional jets with larger aircraft. One departure of a Boeing 717, for example, can handle roughly as many passengers as two 50-seat regional jets — and requires one gate instead of two.
As a result, Delta and other airlines are converting some gates for smaller aircraft into fewer gates for larger jets. By 2016, due to those conversions, the airport is set to have 190 gates, Nissalke said. But come 2031, Hartsfield-Jackson is expected to need 33 additional gates — 24 domestic gates and nine international gates.
That would likely call for additional concourses — and the question of whether it will be to the south or east is expected to be a key topic of discussion in coming months as the master planning continues.
Airfield/runways
Air traffic delays vary greatly depending on the weather, congestion in the airspace, air traffic controller staffing — and the number of runways.
With the airport’s current five runways, air traffic delays per arrival during bad weather are expected to increase from an average of 10.6 minutes today to 35 minutes by 2031.
Yet with good weather, “we have no problem at all,” Miller said.
Airport planners will also consider how improvements in air traffic control may reduce delays.
The planners say a sixth runway could be shoehorned between I-75 and I-85, north of the fifth runway, which would increase the capacity on the airfield and reduce the average air traffic delays during bad weather. But it is also the most controversial type of expansion at the airport, due to concerns about increased noise and the need to move or shut down nearby businesses.
“The airport is landlocked, so the only way to expand is they’re going to have to take out some businesses to make that happen. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of a great economic machine like the airport,” said Kerry Ringham, general manager for the Sheraton Gateway Atlanta Airport, which lies in a parcel that would likely need to be closed to make room for the runway. “I’m anxious to see what the new plan looks like.”
The sixth runway turned into a political hot potato during the airport’s last master plan study in 1999.
Then-airport General Manager Ben DeCosta removed the sixth runway from the airport’s plans and pursued only a fifth runway, which opened in 2006. But he said he couldn’t bind a future airport chief or mayoral administration to the pledge. Back then, DeCosta estimated it would cost $1.1 billion to build a sixth runway.
The next steps for the airport master plan include laying out proposals for development, determining how the expansion would happen and how to pay for it, then finalizing airport layout plans to submit to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The 1999 master plan led to more than $6 billion in capital improvement projects at the airport through today. This time around, some of the same projects that were tabled last time are returning to the drawing board — including the south gates and sixth runway — and are likely to generate debate.
About the Author
