Jerry Orr may no longer be running Charlotte Douglas International Airport, but Orrism — the irrational belief that the skies are always sunny over Charlotte and that air service can do nothing but grow from here — is alive and well. The latest sign is Charlotte City Council move towards building a new concourse out at the airport. The description of the project via via the UPoR:
The concourse will be located just north of the existing Concourse A, with nine new gates for jets to load and unload passengers. Charlotte Douglas International Airport currently has 96 gates, so the additional capacity will push it over 100.
After that comes:
Charlotte Douglas said airlines have been requesting more gates, driving the expansion plans. The new, 211,000-square-foot Concourse A North will be connected to Concourse A. In addition to the gates, the facilities will include concessions and office space.
The airport’s plans call for a second phase of Concourse A North, which would add an additional 16 gates. Construction on the $140 million first phase is scheduled to start in January and last for 18 months, funded by airport revenue bonds.
The second, 16-gate phase could start construction in 2020.
Problems? Where to begin. The existing 12-gate A Concourse serves pretty much everyone besides US Airways/American Airlines. Now that American has moved out, and JetBlue has moved over from D Concourse, it supports about 70 flights a day. That’s not all that heavy utilization. Might Delta or United benefit from having access to an extra gate or two? Sure. Do they need nine more gates? No. Could I come up with a scenario in which the non-American Airlines carriers expand so much that they need a total of 21 gates within the next five years? No.
Want to bring American/US Airways into the equation? Feel free, but there are five problems:
1. The two carriers’ combined flights from CLT are down since the merger (summer 2013: 677 combined flights, compared to 660 this summer) was announced.
2. At the same time, those 660 flights a day still aren’t that far from the 700 flights a day mark that was touted as a possibility to help sell the merger here.
3. American and US Airways haven’t truly integrated their flight operations yet; legacy US Airways planes are pretty much still just flying routes from legacy US Airways hubs like Charlotte. There’s significant downsize risk when the combined American really starts moving all the pieces around.
4. 30 percent of American/US Airways flights from CLT are on aircraft that seat 50 or fewer passengers. The industry is now aggressively moving away from such planes and replacing them with aircraft seating 76 or more. No, this doesn’t mean a bunch of smaller markets are going to see a sudden 50 percent increase in capacity. Instead, imagine fewer flights a day on bigger planes, with some small markets possibly losing flights all together. We could easily lose 50 flights a day over time just.
5. The biggest unserved markets within a 1,000 miles are Wichita, KS and Madison, WI and it goes downhill from there. In other words, growth opportunities are limited.
Put this all together, and does it in any way justify increasing the number of gates by potentially a quarter in the next five years? Absolutely not. Yet here the city is talking about it. Jerry Orr laid out a plan for expanding for expanding the airport and hell if a placeholder like Brent Cagle will upset the apple cart, particularly given the uncertainty about airport control.
