Louis Armstrong International Airport is … not great. For as much as New Orleans prides itself and relies on tourism, the city’s airport offers an underwhelming welcome to visitors to the Crescent City.
The Louis Armstrong International Airport began commercial service in May 1946 under the name Moisant Field. The airport was named after a daredevil pilot, John Moisant, who died in 1910 in a plane crash on the land that later became the airport. In 1959, a new terminal building replaced the large airplane hangar that served as the terminal. This 1959 construction serves as the shell of the current terminal building. In 1974, the airport renovated and opened Concourses A (now closed) and B. Concourse C opened in 1992 and was renovated in 2007. Concourse D opened in 1996 and was expanded in 2011. Following Hurricane Katrina, the airport underwent extensive renovations as New Orleans sought to bring the tourist trade back to the city. Further renovations added a new rental car facility and upgraded the terminal’s interior as part of the city’s bid to host of the Super Bowl in 2013.
Even with the renovations, the airport has suffered from some serious issues. For one thing, there is no place to eat in the airport. Post 9-11, major airports like Dallas-Fort Worth, LAX, Houston, and Atlanta have made concerted efforts to improve the quality of food and amenities inside their airports. In its recommendations for dining at Armstrong, Eaterhas lengthy list of places within 20 minute drive but few within the airport itself. Next May, however, the food options should improve at Louis Armstrong. On May 15, 2019, the airport will open its new terminal that has been under construction since 2013. It will feature new dining options from New Orleans chefs Leah Chase, Susan Spicer, and Emeril Lagasse.
The new terminal will be the capstone to an unprecedented decade for the New Orleans airport. Four out of every five passengers who come into or out of Louisiana fly through Armstrong. In recent years, the airport has added two direct flights to Europe: to London on British Airways and to Frankfurt on Condor. Airport traffic has increased by over 60% making Armstrong the third fastest growing airport in the country. The new terminal will be the first complete terminal replacement at an American airport since Indianapolis in 2008. The airport had a record number of passengers in 2017, over 12 million, nearly double the post-Katrina low of 6.2 million in 2006.
The airport was the centerpiece of former mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration. In 2011, Landrieu began agitating for a new airport. His efforts followed 30 years of failed alternatives that included constructing a new airport on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, building a new airport in New Orleans East, renovating the current terminal, and a host of other proposals. The airport board hired a consulting firm that studied four different options: refurbishing the current terminal for the cost of $595 million, or building a new terminal in three different locations: on the site of the current one, west of the existing terminal, or north. Landrieu and the airport board settled on the fourth option, constructing a new terminal north of the current one for $650 million. They settled on the northern option due to its proximity to Interstate 10. This massive financial outlay came in spite of the fact that the airport had just spent $300 million renovating the existing terminal as part of its bid to host the Super Bowl in February 2013.
That wasn’t the only issue that arose during the airport construction. The cost of the project, originally estimated at $650 million, has ballooned to $1.3 billion. The cost overruns came from several areas. First, the original design of the terminal was too small. The airport board decided to add five more gates in anticipation of growing demand causing the cost to spike. Interstate flyovers, that would take traffic directly from the interstate to the airport, had not been factored into the original cost, adding an additional $150 million at minimum. Shifting soils necessitated the construction of new sewages pipes and pushed the opening of the terminal from 2018 to 2019. The new long-term parking lot will also not be ready by the time the airport opens meaning that shuttle services will have to transport passengers to and from the lot. Rental car services will also rely on shuttles. Currently, the rental car facility is in walking distance of the terminal. This will not be the case in 2019 with the new terminal.
Additionally, the new flyovers have not been built yet and won’t be ready until 2023 at the earliest. This was the result of poor planning by the airport board as they did not factor traffic into their original plans for the new terminal. So when the new terminal opens, passengers arriving on I-10 from New Orleans will have to make their way through three traffic lights on the heavily congested Loyola Drive. Passengers coming from Baton Rouge will have to navigate two stoplights and an already congested off-ramp. The current flyovers take only five minutes from the interstate to the airport. Until the new ones are constructed, it will take a lot longer.
At a ceremony marking the construction of the new terminal, Landrieu promised that the airport “will be the economic engine that drives the future.” Whether that is in 2019, 2023, or sometime later remains to be seen.
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