KCRag Forum

Supposedly 2 lounges

KCPowercat wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 11:17 am
* covered below ground walkways to garage where buses appear to be getting room to (un)load, keeping them out of the front drive

A little bit of room. Someone'e being really cheap all of sudden when it comes to transit at the new terminal...

KCPowercat wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 4:10 pm Supposedly 2 lounges

Room for 2 lounges.

Thanks for the clarification ember.

DaveKCMO wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 9:08 am

KCPowercat wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 11:17 am
* covered below ground walkways to garage where buses appear to be getting room to (un)load, keeping them out of the front drive

A little bit of room. Someone'e being really cheap all of sudden when it comes to transit at the new terminal...

Name names! We need to have a voice.

bobbyhawks wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 3:22 pm 20 lines is a nice deal! Any backups will not be for lack of capability, so I hope they keep them staffed to keep the average wait down. I arrived around 20 minutes before boarding for my Southwest flight a few weeks ago with an A boarding pass and just jumped into line in the middle of the B boarding. The Monday morning TSA pre-check line was such a mess (like 40+ people, including the normal % of folks who didn't realize it's pre-check only until the last minute).

Side note, has there been any mention of airport "elite" lounges?

There's 50 lines at every area Wal-Mart too..

KCPowercat wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 3:14 pm Thanks for the clarification ember.

There were about 20 plus police cars on the way to the airport. At least one at every exit and many with their lights on. Who's flying in? Trump is supposed to be in St Louis today

Trump is here.

Flew to Houston for the first time in several years this past week. And parked at the airport overnight the first time ever. (we normally do drop off)

Going there wasn't bad, no real wait in any line, but waiting for the red bus at was vague not because I didn't expect to take it but there's no signs up about timing. For a new user to the airport seeing multiple airport busses go past the lot could be concerning.

I find the take you own luggage to the scanning machine to be super weird. That's one thing that can't go away quick enough.

We flew to Hobby and it was way easier to get out of. Super long walk to luggage pickup but it was easy to get out from there.

Coming back the self serve terminals were a bit weird. They filled the space in front of luggage dropoff with the kiosks and there was no clear line like KC has for Southwest. I liked the kiosks but like KC's queue better.

Hobby airport isn't much busier than KCI annually and I must have seen 200 people getting food and eating just in one of the three arms at 8:45 in the evening. Just one seating area had to have 100 people.

Coming back leaving KCI was a huge mess. A bunch of planes came in all at once and the circle drive was double parked at the luggage exit as well as parking in the rental car pickup that it was chaos.

For bus pickup I was hopping on to get our car and go pickup everyone. The driver skipped the stop I was at! Putting the busses in the same space as car pickup is quickly becoming impossible. They could move the busses away from the terminal and have better results since every bus would be at the same spot. I saw multiple people need help to find the rental car bus pickup spot.

Then back to do my pickup at one point I ended up needing to block two lanes to let a father with four suitcases and a 4-5 year old get out of the street. People were walking between cars and drivers were cutting off busses.

I would say the two airports are equally convenient as a whole but I wouldn't purposefully copy Hobby. There's things our new terminal could do better but in terms of design a single security area and arms isn't slower, which is what I expected. And KC's loop dropoff design is absolutely insane with the increased passenger traffic. It's well past being usable.

flyingember wrote: ↑Sun Jul 29, 2018 12:56 pm Flew to Houston for the first time in several years this past week. And parked at the airport overnight the first time ever. (we normally do drop off)

Hobby airport isn't much busier than KCI annually and I must have seen 200 people getting food and eating just in one of the three arms at 8:45 in the evening. Just one seating area had to have 100 people.

Eating at the airport is not unusual in Houston. I knew many people that did it routinely. Houston's traffic woes can interrupt anyone's trip to the airport at any time, and I always made it a practice to arrive very early for flights. On morning flights, my wife and I would get to the airport early enough for breakfast - that gave us the opportunity to at least leave the house before the morning rush (which begins at about 4:45 AM in Houston). I remember the Beltway getting shut down by a car on fire on the way to Bush (I rarely used Hobby) when I had a 3 hour cushion and I was only a couple of miles away and still barely made my flight.

In terms of dining, while I think KCI definitely needs more and better dining options, it doesn't have the same driving forces (particularly for locals) as Houston has when it comes to dining at the airport. At KCI, I suspect the majority of those that dine at the airport are business people that don't want to stop at a restaurant but want to eat before they arrive late at their destination. Hopefully, the new terminal can accommodate them better than the present terminal. And I think with better options, locals might start skipping the rushed meal at home or a local restaurant and eat at the airport.

It's not just business travelers. Families too. Now, by no means will everyone but back when the mall had food courts many people who were shopping took advantage of them rather than eating at home. The airport will be the same. It's location convenience and it's often food you can't take through security. I saw a woman get on the plane at Hobby carrying two Sonic-style of drinks.

For a family it's already enough of a pain to grab car seats and to carry luggage for everyone. And you have to find the shuttle and get everyone on it, and then off and deal with luggage again. (The B parking garage was full at 5am on a Wednesday, the convenience factor of it is gone)

Paola, Cameron, Odessa, Topeka, Pleasant Hill are all at least an hour from the airport without traffic.

If you're making a 7am flight, living an hour away means leaving at 4:30-5am. If you worry security is long that becomes 4:00-4:30. If you have small kids you can't be certain they'll be awake enough to eat until you're through security.

So with more options leaving a little earlier and eating at the airport becomes way more feasible. You get through security before 5:30 and go straight to breakfast. You need to eat anyways, why not get through security early so your kids aren't whining in a bunch of long lines and you risk being barely on time and have no time to eat?

The airport food court I would like to see copied is Midway.

But Superdawg isn't in Midway anymore...

Sounds like there will be new renderings at the airport committee meeting this Thursday. So this is one to tune in to.

New renderings...

https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/of ... i-terminal

ETA: Not much to see. The drive up reminds me of most airports - with the drop off on the right and the garage on the left. It looks like a standard airport. SLC comes to mind out of my own recency bias.

WSPanic wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:12 am New renderings...

https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/of ... i-terminal

Convenience factor will go way up with that giant garage allowing more people to park close.

Almost impossible to tell from these poor initial renderings, but where is the awesome scallop-roof design from the preliminary images? I loved that element, and if we get a generic flat box I'll be very disappointed.

I understand perhaps losing the two-story indoor fountain, but first impression is this looks like a major downgrade from earlier images. We want something a "little" special, right? Will withhold further judgement until much higher quality images become available.

rxlexi wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:35 am Almost impossible to tell from these poor initial renderings, but where is the awesome scallop-roof design from the preliminary images? I loved that element, and if we get a generic flat box I'll be very disappointed.

I understand perhaps losing the two-story indoor fountain, but first impression is this looks like a major downgrade from earlier images. We want something a "little" special, right? Will withhold further judgement until much higher quality images become available.

Agree. And after all these months we get just five new images? Aside from a fountain near garage and terminal, there isn't much of a 'wow' factor. I'm not advocating for hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades, but the terminal appears to be...a box. I do like all of the natural light and maybe they can do something interested with the exterior wrap on the garage, but there really doesn't appear to be anything unique about the interior or exterior of the terminals.

Anyone been to Terminal C at IAH? Nearly every seat has it's own power station/USB port and tablet computer that can be used to order food from anywhere in the terminal and delivered right to you. https://www.aviationpros.com/article/12 ... experienceThe waiting areas in the new renderings show seating that's nothing better than what's there now. Maybe aim for additional revenue like from an attached hotel https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/airport ... inals.html

This is feeling more and more like the Sprint Center process all over again - promised bells and whistles in the initial renderings in order to get people on board and then delivered 'what we can afford' pared down version.

Looks like they recycled the old wood floor and glued it to the ceiling!

Looks pretty boring. I'm guessing they're stripping all the fun because the airlines want more gates and least money.