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Fly in or out of one of North Carolina's three major airports these days and you can't help but notice all the new construction. More parking decks are going up, access roads are improving and more runways are being added. At both Raleigh-Durham International and Charlotte Douglas International, on-going and potential construction could vastly change the size and scope of the airports and improve convenience for passengers. Of course, those benefits won't occur until after all the construction is finished. Mention RDU's “parking problem” and Mike Blanton, the airport's public relations chief, winces slightly. “We do get a bad rap for that, but how much of it is perception and how much reality?” Currently 11,300 cars can park at RDU, albeit a good number of them in far-flung park-and-ride lots. With the completion of a $40 million parking lot (pictured above), due with luck to open in November, that number will increase by 2,700. If the lot does get completed by November, in time for holiday traffic, it will still have missed its original deadline by five months. “Unlike putting up a new building in some empty site,” Blanton says, “our challenge is to provide normal operation with construction going on around it.” The expanded parking and the addition of a new curbside and two lanes of traffic at Terminal A will eliminate a lot of headaches for Triangle travelers. “This will essentially double the amount of roadway we have to work with,” Blanton says. “It'll make everything out there run a lot smoother.” Other immediate parking improvements include the paving of a gravel park-and-ride lot. “We know it's no fun dragging luggage over the rocks and around mud puddles,” Blanton acknowledges. And over the course of the next eight or nine years, the airport will continue to add on to the new deck in order to end up with some 16,000 parking spaces between terminals A and C, not including the existing park-and-ride lots. A tunnel eventually will run under the parking deck, connecting the two terminals. Terminal construction, too, is in the works. Airport plans call for tearing out an existing cargo facility to expand Terminal A, making room for more flights and additional carriers. Eventually, like neighboring Terminal C, A will be two levels with departing passengers and ticketing on the upper level and arriving passengers and baggage claim on the lower. “It's a major, major project, in the neighborhood of $400 to $500 million dollars,” Brantley says. “It'll take place in a series of phases over the next five to seven years.” The airport's capital improvement plan also calls for the addition of a third larger runway in the next six to eight years, and there's a five-year redevelopment project for the general aviation facilities, including new hangar space, new taxi way, and new terminal. In Charlotte, in addition to proposing a fourth runway, airport officials are in talks with Norfolk Southern Railroad about a plan to build a $90 million railroad terminal, that would link the airport, railroad, highways and the Port of Charleston. “Certainly if you look at the fact that Charlotte is a primary distribution hub and the sixth largest wholesale center in the country with $26 billion in wholesale sales and 43,000 people in this county employed in wholesale, you can see there is a need for cargo shipping and handling here,” says Tony Crumbly, vice president of research for the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. “Nothing of the scope they're talking about is available now. And this is the logical place for pulling all the goods that are shipped in and out of this area.” Construction at the airports is an outward sign of strong growth this entire decade by the state's economy. That growth is obvious in other ways, as follows: Fed-Ex Plans Proceeding In Greensboro, planning continues for the Federal Express Mid-Atlantic Hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport. “We don't have the same kind of dynamics going on as RDU,” says Ted Johnson, executive director of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority. “But we're working hard and excited about Fed Ex.” Currently an environmental impact statement study is underway. Engineering and architectural consulting firm URS Greiner, charged with overseeing the process, has begun gathering data on 21 areas of potential environmental impact, including noise, land use, air and water quality, light emissions, hazardous materials, and wetlands. A draft of the EIS is expected in late 1999 with a complete statement submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration by August 2000. Dr. G. Donald Jud, an economics professor at UNC-G, recently estimated that the hub will generate an economic impact of $2.4 billion in its first 10 years of operation. He also predicts that the facility will produce 2,541 full-time jobs, both directly and indirectly, and projects that the number could increase to over 3,000 by the year 2008. The proposed hub has not been without its share of controversy, however. Local citizens' groups worry that the hub will increase noise and pollution levels and actually cost the area money, although airport officials call claims that the city will have to spend unreasonable amounts of money on noise mitigation “grossly exaggerated.” Raleigh-Durham International The news that could have the greatest impact on travelers at RDU is the arrival of Southwest Airlines, which begins service on June 6 with 12 daily departures. “Southwest is going to be a very big deal,” says Keith Debbage, a UNC-Greensboro professor and airline industry expert. “If the market is anything like they're predicting, they could be looking at 30 to 50 flights a day. It will revolutionize air travel in this state.” The nation's fifth largest air carrier, Southwest chose RDU over several other airports, including Greensboro's Piedmont Triad International, RDU's closest competitor. Blanton attributes RDU's appeal to the area's diverse marketplace and potential for growth. “We're not reliant on any one industry. We've got computers and pharmaceuticals, medical facilities, lots of high-tech, government . . . oh, and students! Students love to fly Southwest,” he says. “It's part of Southwest's corporate culture to have a ball at work and provide unique customer service. That's resulted in a lot of customer loyalty.” Despite it's reputation for uniqueness, however, Southwest's real draw is its fare structure. Known for being a low-cost carrier, Southwest's impending arrival already has stimulated a fare war among some of the airport's other carriers in an effort to remain competitive. According to Blanton, Delta Express and MetroJet started dropping prices in April, with others likely to follow suit. Ironically, it was American Airline's decision to close its hub at RDU that opened the airport to new low-cost carriers and more competition among airlines and, as a result, more favorable fares for passengers. “When American closed its hub in 1995, a lot of people had a `woe is me' kind of thing going on,” Blanton explains. “But John Brantley [the airport's director] has a good knack for seeing 15 to 20 years down the road. He knew that without a dominant player we would eventually be able to reap the benefits of airline deregulation.” Fare Woes in Charlotte More than 20 years ago, passage of the Airline Deregulation Act phased out government control over fares and service and allowed market forces to determine the price, quantity and quality of domestic air service. In many markets, deregulation resulted in lower fares and more competition. But, according to a March study by the U.S. General Accounting Office, “these benefits have not been evenly distributed throughout U.S. air service markets” and “some operating and marketing practices have created barriers to entry for new airlines wishing to begin service and for established airlines seeing to enter new markets.” The GAO's report names Charlotte/Douglas International Airport as one of six “gate restrained” airports, meaning the agency believes that competition at the airport is restrained by restrictive gate-leasing arrangements predominantly held by one airline. Indeed, the airport is known in the industry as a “fortress hub,” or one where a single carrier can claim at least 75 percent of the market share. In the Queen City, US Airways handles 90 percent of all the traffic in and out of the airport and holds exclusive leases on 43 of the airport's 48 gates. This, the GAO reports, makes Charlotte one of the most expensive airports to fly out of in the country. “From our perspective, there is no barrier to entry in Charlotte,” US Airways spokesman Rick Weintraub says. “We don't have a lockdown on facilities. There are facilities there for other carriers.” Haley Gentry, a public information specialist for the airport, concurs. “We have all the major carriers here and they serve their hubs in other cities. We have available gates as of this moment, so space is available for other carriers to initiate service.” (US Airways is adding a new flight to London. See story. p. 41) As for widely reported studies about the expense of flying out of Charlotte, Weintraub counters that the comparisons weren't made “on an apples to apples basis. “The problem with these studies is they lump all the business fares [which are traditionally more expensive] and leisure fares together and come up with an average. If you compare a destination like Orlando, which has almost all leisure travel, to one like Charlotte, where there is a much higher percentage of business travel, sure, Charlotte's going to look expensive.” Even so, The Business Journal recently reported that almost 60 percent of the companies it surveyed say high fares at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport negatively affected their business. In response to mounting concerns about the fares and their impact on industry, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory appointed a 10-member task force, chaired by Ed Weisiger Sr. of Carolina Tractor, to evaluate all aspects of airline service, competition and airfares in the Charlotte region. The task force is expected to conduct a thorough evaluation of the issues before making an August recommendation to the City Council. Gentry says the task force isn't unique to Charlotte and that the city is dealing with issues familiar to other hub cities around the country. “We have high hopes that it will do something positive, and if there's a market that can be served by a low-cost carrier we'd love to figure out how to do that.” The airport authority, she says, is also working closely with the business community through the Chamber to see if its needs are being met. And while the hub has spurred controversy of late, Debbage, the airline industry expert from UNC-G, reminds us of its benefits as well. “You've got to remember that there are not many cities with a million folks that have 500 daily departures, as Charlotte does.” “It is hard to have both,” Gentry agrees. “Either you have the level of service that a major carrier can offer, or you have more competition and more airlines but half the cities to choose from.” US Airways employs 7,300 at the Charlotte hub; created 1,000 new maintenance positions there last year, with average annual salaries of $40,000; and serves about 140 destinations directly from CDI. Small Airports Providing Big Service Sometimes left out of the limelight generated by the state's major airports, North Carolina's smaller airports work to remain the logical choice for local flyers. “That's just the nature of the beast,” says Will Plentl Jr., executive director of the New Hanover County Airport Authority. “What we try to do is make Wilmington International Airport as attractive and convenient as possible and we offer the best air transportation services we can.” Last year, the airport served about half a million passengers, an increase of almost 20 percent over 1997. Plentl partially attributes that increase to the addition of United Express and Midway Corporate airlines as well as the trend toward more competitive fares. In all, five carriers serve Wilmington with about 50 total arrivals and departures a day. A $6 million terminal renovation will add more gates and jetways. What the airport lacks in sheer numbers it hopes to make up in comfort: the terminal's waiting areas are designed to feel more like a hotel lobby or front porch, even, with rocking chairs and couches, and business travelers can plug in laptops in private work modules. “We're a small, but self-sufficient airport,” Plentl says. “We're profitable in a small way.” Asheville Regional Airport, too, saw gains in passenger levels last year, with over half a million flyers, up 6.8 percent from 1997. “We're pretty modest by state-wide standards, but big from an Asheville perspective,” says Kathryn Solee, director of the airport's marketing and public relations. Three carriers serve Asheville Regional with an average of 27 flights daily to hub airports in Atlanta, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Raleigh. Debbage, from UNC-G, thinks this strategy works well for smaller airports. “I encourage them to offer more commuter flights to the big hubs, because there just is no more room in the state for major jet service. I think that by focusing their promotional strategies on recruiting commuter affiliates of major airlines smaller airports can really thrive.” North Carolina's Major Airports at a Glance Piedmont Triad International Airport, Greensboro
Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, Charlotte
Raleigh-Durham International Airport, Wake County
COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. This story first appeared in the June 1999 issue of North
Carolina Magazine. |
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