Now here’s a story that makes a body cringe.
The New York Times published a story online today about the disastrous decline of activity at Memphis International Airport after Memphis lost its hub status in 2013.
It had been a hub for Northwest, but in the wake of the 2008 merger between Delta and Northwest, Delta — based in Atlanta — decided it didn’t need a hub in Memphis. As a result, the passenger count at Memphis International went from more than 11 million in 2007, the last full year before the merger, to about 4 million last year.
The NYT story was accompanied by photos (like the one below), showing a virtually lifeless airport.
While the story didn’t send shivers down my spine, it did give me pause.
Here we are in Kansas City with about the same passenger count — 11.5 million — that Memphis had before losing its hub status. And here we are, about to build a new $1 billion terminal, replacing the three horseshoe-shaped terminals dating to the early 1970s.
Reading The Times’ story makes me very glad the people planning our new terminal appear were conservative in their projections. We lost our hub status a long time ago and no longer need three, or even two, terminals. One should do just fine, for the foreseeable future.
Plans for the new terminal initially called for 35 gates, but that was upped to 39 last month. I recall seeing at least one letter to the editor in which the writer questioned why so few gates had been planned at first and went on to criticize the four-gate expansion as less than ambitious.
Maybe that letter writer will feel differently if he or she sees the story about Memphis.
…Besides the fact that Kansas City has long since absorbed the downturn that came from loss of hub status, another factor that helps keep me positive about the new airport is that this is a bigger market than Memphis and has fewer large airports within striking range.
Think about it: While our nearest major airports are St. Louis, Chicago, Denver and maybe Dallas-Fort Worth, Memphis is relatively close to at least three other major cities — St. Louis, Louisville and Nashville — in addition to Atlanta, the busiest airport in the country.
Fortunately for Memphis residents, the city has not invested heavily in a major expansion in more than 40 years.
Like KCI, Memphis International has three terminals. The original, single terminal was built at a cost of $6.5 million and opened in 1963. In 1974, a $31.6 million expansion added two sub-terminals and corresponding concourses.
Now, Memphis is spending big bucks to retrench. On the immediate horizon is a $219 million renovation, which will involve closing Terminal B while it gets updated and imporved. When that is complete, it will reopen and terminals A and C will close indefinitely. Altogether, about 60 gates will be shut down.
On the plus side, the runways remain busy, largely because Memphis is home to FedEx, which has jets flying in and out day and night. But what a comedown for a proud city! The NYT story said that at the mention of the airport, Memphis area residents generally respond with “a shrug, a grimace or a sad stare.” The story quoted the president of the airport authority as saying the initial reaction of many people was along the lines of, “Oh, my God, we’re not going to be a real city any more.”
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All we can do in KC is hope that the people who are being paid to design the new terminal know what they’re doing and are projecting accurately. The last thing we want, down the road, is to see a headline like the one on today’s NYT story…
“What’s Worse Than a Crowded Airport? An Empty Airport”
