Airport expansion news?

[Pete]

Does anybody have any idea if the airport expansion is going to be complete in August?

Of course, they have not updated the expansion section of their website for 9 months now, and the last I knew, they pushed back the completion (sans the second concourse) for the 3rd time to August 2006.

Even though it will net only 3 more gates, it will provide a second security checkpoint and a couple more bag claims.

And of course, ultimately it would allow for a bunch more gates is we ever move forward with Phase III.

[Patrick]

I was actually at the airport today. We're flying out on a trip tomorrow. Looks like everything will be complete. The only gates, baggage claim, and ticket counters left to open belong to Southwest and Delta. Looks pretty nice.....I'm very impressed with our airport.

[Pete]

Thanks Patrick. As usual, this site provides better info. than our full-time airport marketing director.

I really like the design as well. It will be very nice to wrap everything up and start putting our best face forward to visitors and citizens.

[Patrick]

That's pretty sad that I know more than our airport marketing director. LOL Anyways, looked to me like everything would be completed by August.

[metro]

As usual Karen Carney fails the city again. What is the Airport Trust's deal? Didn't they screen our new airport director better to overcome these problems?

Looks like it's time to send her another round of emails to get the website up to date:

karen.carney@okc.gov

You might want to cc her boss as well:

Mark.Kranenburg@okc.gov

[Pete]

They finally provided an update on their website, no doubt due to our emails. However, they are now saying LATE FALL for completion, no less than the 4th significant delay and yet another vague time promise that probably still won't be met.

Also, note the snippy tone of the first paragraph:




The final section of Phase II has been underway for the last nine months. Most of the construction has been out of sight of the public with relatively little impact on the airport’s daily operation. Progress is steadily moving along with a target completion date of late fall.

This final piece of the project is substantial. Three additional gates, (which will be Delta Airlines’ permanent location,) a sixth gift shop and a large meeting room will finish out the concourse area. Down below, two additional baggage delivery systems and tug areas are nearing completion.

A second checkpoint will relieve the heavy loads and congestion in the ticket lobby area. Because additional space was available on the east side that was not available for the west checkpoint, the area was modified to enable more queuing in the checkpoint area itself, instead of in the lobby.

Two more bag belts, three rental car counters, two ticket counters and an additional up/down escalator are 90% complete. These areas will open at the same time as the checkpoint and concourse area.

[writerranger]

I have been back and forth between OKC and Houston a lot the past month. A couple of times by car and several round-trips by air. I can say that the "new" OKC airport is quite impressive. I recently saw the JD Powers Airport/Airline rankings and Houston Hobby/Dallas Love was tied for first for best medium-sized airports. I can believe it - Hobby is one nice airport. Much easier to navigate than the giant Intercontinental. But Oklahoma City? While small, it's now a place that we can all be proud of. 1000% better than what was there pre-renovations.

---

[Patrick]

Much easier to navigate than the giant Intercontinental

I'd say navigating DFW has gotten much better since they've added Skky Link. I think that's the best upgradew they've made to that airport.

Also, they're in the midst of capping off a multi-billion dollar renovation at DFW. I'll admit...it's nice. They have multi-level food court areas now in the terminals, with restaurants and stores like Cantina Laredo, TGI Fridays, Fossil, Brookstone, etc. I was pretty impressed traveling through there yesterday.

[metro]

Their update was definitely due to our emails, as always. Here is Karen's response back to me:

xxxxx, thanks for the friendly nudge. I have added a short update. I have also asked the webmaster to upload some photos I took today. Hopefully, they will be there by the end of the week.
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 9:40 AM
To: Carney, Karen
Subject: WRWA website


Karen,

I was just curious as to when the WRWA website might be updated again. Looks like the last update on construction was back in the early part of last October. Thanks.

xxxxxx

[Patrick]

In regards to our airport, I'll make a few comments.

It's not bad compared to others our size. But, I think our biggest problem as a city is still maintenance. I noticed that the carpeting in the terminal already looks horribly filthy, and the light fixtures are loaded with bugs. Gross! I know, I'm probably the only one that notices these things, but we really need to stay on top on the little details.

[Pete]

Send them an email about that, Patrick.

I'm sure you are not the only one that notices things like that and there is no use spending millions on renovations if the place isn't going to be properly maintained.

[metro]

Patrick, I totally agree. You should email Karen Carney and her boss Mark Kranenburg and let them know. Their email addresses are above. I'll do the same as well.

[Patrick]

Okay guys, I will send them an email.

By the way, I noticed something else. On the far east side fo the main terminal on the air side, I noticed they have the Bar of 1907, or something like that. I think that's a completely horrible waste of space, IMO.

[Patrick]

Here's the email I sent:

Hey Karen,

I just returned yesterday (July 4th) at 12:17PM on American Airlines from a trip we took leaving June 27th to Albuquerque, New Mexico, (connecting at DFW) and driving from there up to the northern New Mexico ski areas for summer fun. I wanted to share my experiences with our airport.

This is my second trip from the new aiport. We took another trip last summer to Hawaii.

The new expansion at our airport is very nice. I love the open air feel, and the huge glass panes. I like the native stone and modern steel look! The gift shops seem to be of superb quality. On leaving at the beginning of our trip, I had a Red Rock Breakfast Burrito at the restaurant near the east side of the concourse. Food was great. No complaints.

I did have a few suggestions from my experiences.

Maintenance of existing improvements seems to be the main issue, and always has been. We seem to have a habit in this city of building facilities, enjoying them for awhile, and then forgetting to maintain them.

Here are some of the things I noticed:

1. We left through Gate 4 and I already noticed over a years time, that the carpet is starting to look incredibly filthy. There were spills and stains on it everywhere. This isn't very attractive to new people coming to our city.

2. All of the flourescent light fixtures were filled with dirt and bugs. Gross.

These are small issues that some people might not notice, but I think it's the small details we need to keep on top of.

I'm not trying to be critical, but instead, trying to give some constructive feedback to try to keep up the great image of our airport.

I hope these comments help and I hope they can be addressed.

Other than that, the airport looks great!

You really can't compare our airport to DFW, although DFW has made some wonderful improvements with their new multi-level food courts and Sky Link.

I suppose you could compare Albuquerque's airport to ours. It's similar in size. I like ours better in the way we have the massive glass sky lights and panels surrounding the concourse. Ours is brighter than theirs. And I like our higher ceilings.

I do still think our airport looks lopsided with only the one west concourse and the terminal. I know we don't need the space now, but finishing the east concourse would sure make our airport look more attractive. Even if the airlines aren't leasing as many gates any longer, having the added space, and maybe spreading out the airlines more might be nicer. That way you wouldn't cram as many people into the tight gate spaces. If we have extra gates that aren't used, so be it. We could always us the space to spread people out more for added comfort, plus we'd have the space to add more gates later if we ever needed them. I say go forward with the East Concourse. Spread the airlines equally across the entire structure, instead of cramming them all into the West Concourse.

Thanks, Patrick, moderator, www.okctalk.com

[metro]

I emailed her and her boss Patrick

[Patrick]

Here's why I'm a little ticked with our current airport trust. I just flew back from Albuquerque International Sunport, an airport with a passanger count similar to ours with an airport around 500,000 Square feet. While we're working off a master plan that will carry us through 2012, they've just completed their Master Plan for the next century (Yup, I said Century), which will include a new second teriminal which will bring their capacity to over a million square feet. Note, this city currently has a passenger count of around 3 mill passengers a year (much like ours). And they're predicting that to rise to 7 million over the next century....yup, I said Century. They've already considered moving the airport, demolishing and building a new center facility, or building a 2nd terminal. They've opted to build a 2nd terminal.

http://www.cabq.gov/airport/news.html

While we're thinking 6 years down the road, everyone else is thinking 20-100 years down the road.

This is why we're so far behind as a city.

[Patrick]

When you look at the link above, click on the 2nd link on the page, and then scroll to page 4. Zoom in and it shows their current passenger terminal (which is about the size of our new one) and their proposed new 2nd terminal. Wow. Pretty impressive for a city with a metro area of less the 700K folks.

[Patrick]

Here's another email I sent:

Hey Karen,

I just returned from Albuquerque International Sunport, and I've done some research on their airport. They have around the same passenger count we do, and their terminal building is about the same size as our new one (500K feet).

I was looking at their master plan. http://www.cabq.gov/airport/news.html It blows my mind that they have a master plan for the next century. Yup, I said century. We're here planning for 2012 and others are planning for 100 years out. Do you think maybe we need to be a little more forward thinking at the airport trust?

Remember, Albuquerque is a town of roughly 700K people, smaller than Tulsa.

If you look at the second link on their master plan and scroll to page 4 you'll see plans for their terminal over the next century. It calls to build a second terminal to double the space they now have. Wow! This is pretty forward thinking for a city with about 700K people.

I think we need to change the way we're thinking here. If from 1960 to 2000 passenger count grew at our airport from 1mill to 3 mill a year, I'm guessing counts may go up to 6 mill by 2040. 40 years seems a long ways off but not really. What we're building now dictates future development. We need to think ahead. We need to start thinking about how we're going to accomodate these 6 million folks NOW! Is it going to be a second terminal? Are we going to add more concourses?
Do we even have a master plan that reaches that far?

If the answer to those questions is no, we need to get on the ball and start thinking ahead a century.

Albuquerque has the right idea. We need to follow their example.

Thanks, Patrick, www.okctalk.com

[Pete]

You go, Patrick!

All this just serves as a reminder that virtually every city is agressively pursuing urban renewal, conventions & tourists, more jobs and general civic enhancements.

While we all can agree that OKC has come a long way, that in itself is not good enough. We have to do things *better* than comparable or similar cities if any of this will have much meaning outside of our own community.

We've done a good job but we are now being leap-frogged by other cities so it's time to start thinking even more agressively!

[Patrick]

The sad thing is we're being leap-frogged by cities half our size.

[Patrick]

I encourage you to forward your emails to the airportusing the typical city email address firstname.lastname@okc.gov.

[venture]

We need to keep in mind the tourism of ABQ is FAR greater than OKC at this point. The traffic generated during ski season and the various festivals really help bolster the traffic through that airport. As OKC itself continues to develop as a tourist destination, it'll get better.

Yes some airports may be planning far ahead, but realistically only 10-20 years makes sense. We saw what a 9/11 event did to air transportation...its taken 5 years to recover. OKC is doing their planning the right way, as we don't know what will happen. There is no sense in having this huge terminal and only 30% of it used. We don't want to be another Pittsburgh and have a beautiful airport just rotting away.

[Patrick]

Yeah, Albuquerque does have more tourism appeal, but traffic counts between the 2 airports is similar so it's easy to compare.

[metro]

Yeah I agree with both of you. I think we need to be more forward thinking at the airport trust than has been shown. However, I think planning 100 years in advance is too much also. After all in 100 years, will we still be using the traditional airplane? Somehow I think huge advances in technology and nanotechnology will revolutionize the industry as we now know it.

[Patrick]

Thinking 40 years into the future might be more appropriate. Afterall, we're comparing our recent expansion to the expansion that took place in the 60's.