KCRag Forum

KCPowercat wrote:Someone floated the idea of a regional office controlled airport authority. I think this is actually a great idea.

Wouldn't this take an act of both state legislatures like the ATA?

flyingember wrote:

KCPowercat wrote:Someone floated the idea of a regional office controlled airport authority. I think this is actually a great idea.

Wouldn't this take an act of both state legislatures like the ATA?

Instead of regional just think of using the Port Authority.

I don't know what it would take but it decouples KCMO reliance on improvements and gives the region that supports the airport operations a voice.

KCFan wrote:I'm fine with a regional airport authority. With as rough as this thing has been politically, I'm hoping they push the election to the spring now. It's going to be rough to try to mount a campaign with 45ish days left before the election when there's a large number of people that still aren't convinced a new terminal is needed. I think you push a campaign into the spring and get away from all the political drama of the past few months.

There will be no end to the drama. That only gives the opponents more time. There is no time left. We have already pushed the election back by a year.

Latest rumor is aecom and burns and mcdonnell are teaming up. This was in the kansas city business journal earlier today.

LCDSI wrote:Latest rumor is aecom and burns and mcdonnell are teaming up. This was in the kansas city business journal earlier today.

I believe Burns & McDonnell already shot that down.

KCPowercat wrote:Someone floated the idea of a regional office controlled airport authority. I think this is actually a great idea.

Absolutely a great idea. KC residents are only a subset of airport uses perhaps not even a plurality.

Highlander wrote:

KCPowercat wrote:Someone floated the idea of a regional office controlled airport authority. I think this is actually a great idea.

Absolutely a great idea. KC residents are only a subset of airport uses perhaps not even a plurality.

I think I saw 45% MO metro, 50% KS metro, 5% from outside the metro. So KC is a subset of a subset.

From what I've seen in the past, only 12 or 13% of KCMO residents fly once in a given year. So it's definitely a small percentage of KCI's flyers.

JD Power rankings of travelers' satisfaction with airports: http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/j ... tion-study

KCI is ranked 15th out of 21 in the Large airport category (which, of course, is the mid-sized category of the three used in the rankings).

5M passenger enplanements must be the cutoff for large
https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita ... 01_44.html

KCFan wrote:From what I've seen in the past, only 12 or 13% of KCMO residents fly once in a given year. So it's definitely a small percentage of KCI's flyers.

KC area residents are however 90+ percent of the airport users in any given year. We've covered this many, many times. Connecting PAX are not routed through KC and never have been. Every airline routes through their hubs, or through what is most economical for them..IE: typically coastal cities. Nobody's going to send a pax from Frankfurt to connect in KC for a final destination of Atlanta or Philly. Even if we had the BEST airport in the world!

Yeah foreign carriers aren't trying to connect their passengers in KC...they are adding directs for their hubs.

The point being discussed is voting for the terminal.

I had an Uber driver this morning going to the airport that tried to convince me to vote no in November. I tried to explain why a single terminal was better, but she was doing all sorts of mental gymnastics around my answers. She was against the single terminal for all sorts of reasons, from complaining that we had only just upgraded the current terminals 20 years ago, to saying that the current setup was safer from terror attacks.

She brought up "convenience" as a factor, but admitted that she had only flown a couple of times since 9/11.

I think that what hurts the airport issue most among this demographic is that when they do fly, they fly to large, inconvenient airports. Many people haven't been to great airports our size like Austin, Dallas Love Field, Denver, etc, so they don't even know what a good airport is.

Last paragraph is right on the button

KCPowercat wrote:Last paragraph is right on the button

tower wrote: I think that what hurts the airport issue most among this demographic is that when they do fly, they fly to large, inconvenient airports. Many people haven't been to great airports our size like Austin, Dallas Love Field, Denver, etc, so they don't even know what a good airport is.

And something that should directly improve as airlines feel like they can route more flights through KC. No longer will nearly every flight leaving KC be going directly to Atlanta, Chicago, or Dallas.

Thanks for sharing. Good points. Denver is one of the five busiest airports in the country and flies about 50 million more people than KCI so that’s definitely not a peer airport, but the point about people’s perceptions is spot on.

I’ve heard that Cerner sent an email to their employees encouraging them to vote for the terminal.

Need all KC companies to do that.

tower wrote: I think that what hurts the airport issue most among this demographic is that when they do fly, they fly to large, inconvenient airports. Many people haven't been to great airports our size like Austin, Dallas Love Field, Denver, etc, so they don't even know what a good airport is.

And KC fliers fail to make the distinction between an airport where they experience having to catch a connecting flight versus the airport at the start point and final destination of their trip. It should be obvious to everyone in KC that the hassle of getting from one terminal to the next to connect flights in whatever hub they connect through is never going to be an issue in KC for residents beginning and ending trips at KCI. It's actually not an issue to residents of Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and other hubs cities either beginning/ending trips in their respective cities. Those airports are not inherently inconvenient as end points, they just serve dual purposes as hubs.

Renderings coming this week and then I expect the campaign to hit into high gear.