It's a new terminal, not a new airport and the cost is about a billion, not billions. The reason for replacing the terminal has been the same for the last decade - obsolescence, not facilitating transfers.im2kull wrote:It's been well documented in this thread, among others that connecting PAX account for just 5-10% of all travelers at KCI in an average year. That has been a steady trend for the last 35 years. It makes you wonder..should we really rebuild an entire airport at a cost in the Billions of dollars, for an extreme minority of the users of said airport?KCPowercat wrote:Please source the 90% stat
HISTORICAL O&D AND CONNECTING ENPLANED PASSENGERS
ORIGINATING CONNECTING TOTAL
1990 3,297,610 95.9% 141,051 4.1% 3,438,661 100.0%
1991 3,155,360 90.8% 317,973 9.2% 3,473,333 100.0%
1992 3,334,777 89.9% 376,068 10.1% 3,710,845 100.0%
1993 3,572,122 90.0% 398,232 10.0% 3,970,354 100.0%
1994 3,973,561 89.0% 492,414 11.0% 4,465,975 100.0%
1995 4,279,896 90.2% 463,997 9.8% 4,743,893 100.0%
1996 4,591,340 91.0% 452,974 9.0% 5,044,314 100.0%
1997 4,828,188 87.1% 713,382 12.9% 5,541,570 100.0%
1998 4,852,448 86.9% 734,189 13.1% 5,586,637 100.0%
1999 4,984,354 84.2% 935,225 15.8% 5,919,579 100.0%
2000 5,069,362 83.4% 1,010,933 16.6% 6,080,295 100.0%
2001 4,822,825 82.3% 1,036,331 17.7% 5,859,156 100.0%
2002 4,467,232 86.0% 724,584 14.0% 5,191,816 100.0%
2003 4,405,089 90.8% 445,182 9.2% 4,850,271 100.0%
2004 4,610,998 91.7% 416,612 8.3% 5,027,610 100.0%
2005 4,706,304 93.0% 356,535 7.0% 5,062,839 100.0%
2006 5,000,568 91.5% 464,684 8.5% 5,465,252 100.0%
Sources: Federal Aviation Administration, Terminal Area Forecast; U.S. DOT, Schedule T-100; Official Airline
Guide; Landrum & Brown analysis.
H:\KCI Master Plan\Master Plan\Aviation Forecast\Master Sheets and Data\[MCI Master Sheet.xls] Enpax History
The little numbers in Bold, that's the % of connecting passengers we carry. Less than 10% each year on average. Let that one sink in for a moment before making further remarks..
That said, about 11 million passengers go through KCI in a given year. If a mere 5% were transfers, that is 550,000 passengers per year (or about 1500 per day or nearly 100 per hour of airport operation). Double that if the number of transfers go to 10% - and the percentages you present are actually consistently closer to 10% which is about 3000 transfers per day. It really isn't that small of a percentage and in actual numbers, that's a substantial number of transfers. And that number is undoubtedly constrained by the huge pain in the ass it is to transfer at KCI. So those that do transfer are probably unaware of the issues or just don't have a choice. A larger number of transfers of course would almost certainly occur if KCI wasn't indeed the pain in the ass that it is to transfer so the suggestion that we shouldn't design an airport to alleviate one of the most damning problems of the present airport is really not very logical. In any event, it's moot - the sheer number of transfers at KCI is not trivial - it's a big number. We go to great expense to require handicap parking and handicap ramps in every facility in the US to facilitate an even smaller percentage of the population.
But that's not really the issue - the issue is that KCI is a cramped, uncomfortable, inefficient and obsolete airport that in every way measurable, is simply not up to modern standards.