We need a new airport!!!

[kcjak]

Interview with an Allegiant rep on the news last night - their testing the waters to see how things go. If the routes are successful they'll expand to other cities. I flew Allegiant from Wichita to Vegas once and I can't complain. They do a great job with reasonable flights and vacation packages from smaller markets that otherwise wouldn't have much to offer for higher priced major airlines. Not sure how well they'll do in KC.

[earthling]

Allegiant roundtrip from KCI to Tampa is about half the other airlines if flying on Thursdays, and $100 less on other days. But they only fly certain days so for leisure travel mostly.

With low fuel prices lately, it may help them get a foothold on market.

I'd like to see KC get another home grown startup airline a la Vangard now that market conditions are right (fewer airlines and low fuel prices). The larger airlines are not focused on mid-sized airports and essentially control the connection destiny of mid-size markets.

[brewcrew1000]

Allegiant must finely be ready to stop flying out of the Fort Wayne's, Sioux Fall's and Duluth's of the world. This kind of move is actually a threat to Southwest, Spirit and Frontier if they expand to other large cities

[herrfrank]

1. The high rises downtown and the bluffs make landing and takeoff from the Kaw confluence a terrifying ride in a commercial airliner. Not even sure that a 880 or 747 could do it.

Air Force One flies to MKC/ Wheeler Downtown (KC Municipal) Airport as a Boeing 747. It can be done, but it is probably not something that would happen regularly for a commercial airline. The largest daily commercial aircraft into MCI is a 757, I believe. I haven't heard of a scheduled jumbo in many years. (Widebodies do arrive for work at the old TWA maintenance facility of course)

If the city Department of Aviation would update the technology and improve the approaches, MKC could probably handle the traffic of MCI today. Its primary 7000-foot main runway (1/19) is adequate both in length and in availability (time) for all of the current commercial traffic to Kansas City.

Bring it back downtown!

[normalthings]

1. The high rises downtown and the bluffs make landing and takeoff from the Kaw confluence a terrifying ride in a commercial airliner. Not even sure that a 880 or 747 could do it.

Air Force One flies to MKC/ Wheeler Downtown (KC Municipal) Airport as a Boeing 747. It can be done, but it is probably not something that would happen regularly for a commercial airline. The largest daily commercial aircraft into MCI is a 757, I believe. I haven't heard of a scheduled jumbo in many years. (Widebodies do arrive for work at the old TWA maintenance facility of course)

If the city Department of Aviation would update the technology and improve the approaches, MKC could probably handle the traffic of MCI today. Its primary 7000-foot main runway (1/19) is adequate both in length and in availability (time) for all of the current commercial traffic to Kansas City.

Bring it back downtown!

Also get jumbos chartered to bring foreign troops to train at Leavenworth.

[normalthings]

https://youtu.be/HEzWsQVz2Ac
State of Kuwait 747-800 at KCI

[aknowledgeableperson]

From my days of being around airport personnel the downtown location is just not large enough to build a modern airport. Take that back. Not one large enough to handle multiple airlines and the number of gates required. Could probably build one to match Springfield and Joplin.

[FangKC]

There are also other reasons the downtown airport was outdated. There is little room for long-term parking lots, car rental lots, etc. One also has to take into account the noise issue. With more traffic at the downtown airport, one has to acknowledge the amount of noise there would be in areas under the flight zones for the landing and takeoff runways. There is a valid reason the airport was built out in the middle of agricultural land, and why the City owns so much of the land around the runways.

I remember visiting someone who lived near the old Stapleton Airport in Denver and how noisy it was for a residential neighborhood. The rents and housing prices were cheap, but it really was miserable for the residents. I recall the same being true for the airport in Phoenix. They have been slowly buying out the residential areas south and west of the airport and tearing them down.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4299103 ... a=!3m1!1e3

http://www.irwaonline.org/eweb/upload/w ... c_vars.pdf

SOUND AND FURY: FRUSTRATED PHOENIX RESIDENTS ARE ROARING EVER SINCE THE FAA CHANGED SKY HARBOR FLIGHT PATHS

http://tinyurl.com/q8rvrdd

The bottoms seem like a good location for an airport in theory. However, they are prone to flooding and that can severely hamper the operations of an airport. Levees break during prolonged flood events. Even if the levee holds, water can still back up in streams that feed into the river, and because of the porous nature of the bottom lands, water can percolate up through the ground on the dry side of the levee. The bottoms are very sandy soil, and they are much like a sponge. Frequent wet/dry cycles affect the stability of the land itself. Thus, runways would most likely crack and swell, and would require more frequent repair and maintenance.

It was only a few short years ago that the Omaha airport was threatened with closure by flooding on the Missouri.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/16/137231287 ... ort-afloat

http://www.iowadot.gov/aviation/news/pd ... ha.com.pdf

Eppley Field, Omaha.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.2973712 ... a=!3m1!1e3

[flyingember]

It's worth pointing out noise issues wouldn't just be nearby but miles away.

Outside you can hear a small prop airplane on it's approach to MKC 5 miles away (they fly over the Hy-Vee parking lot at NE Englewood). you can hear them inside at roughly half that distance. So an airport moved downtown would be very noisy.

If anyone wanted a quick way to kill the greater downtown residential recovery this is it. Think of the noise of a very large jet echoing around downtown.

Right now the entire approach paths, not just right at the airport, basically follows very rural land which minimizes the complaints.

[brewcrew1000]

A downtown Airport doesn't seem to hurt San Diego, that airport is probably even closer to downtown, they fly right through downtown

[pash]

.

[grovester]

Assuming the downtown airport is not feasible (too close), where in the 5-10 mile radius would be an option?

[flyingember]

Relative to the city core and to the metro's center of population mass, KCI is in the middle of nowhere. And it's where it is not because noise or difficult flight paths prevented it from being built nearer to the core of city. It's where it is mostly just because KC has chosen the cheapest, easiest, lowest-quality option for just about every major civic project it's undertaken since World War II.

Relative to the city core we're not far out compared to other cities. I looked at 15 airports in major cities relative to the city center, using Google's quickest distance there choice and we're in 9th place of those airports.

KCI is 19 miles from the middle of downtown
ORD is 18.2
Detroit is 22.1 from a park in the middle of town
Houston Hobby is 11.5 miles, George Bush 21.5 miles from the convention center
Reagan is 4 miles from the white house, Dulles is 28.0
LaGuardia is 7.5 miles from Central Park, JFK is 14, Newark is 20.5
SFO is 15.3 miles from the Transamerica building, OAK is 20.0 away
LAX is 16.9 miles from the staples center
ATL is 10.3 miles from Georgia State
DEN is 25.7 miles from the state capital

It looks like the distance can be a function of the size of the city when it went in, easiest seen with cities with lots of sprawl
Houston Hobby was developed in 1927, GWB the land was bought in 1957.
Reagan was selected 1926, Dulles 1958
Comparatively MKC was 1927, the expansion of MCI/move was decided in approx 1966

[flyingember]

Assuming the downtown airport is not feasible (too close), where in the 5-10 mile radius would be an option?

5 mile radius is the pre-war suburbs.
Roeland Park, The Plaza, The VA hospital, Blue Valley Park, 210 at N. Brighton, the intersection of 29/35, Riverside, 635 at Parallel, 635 at K-32, 69 at I-35.
As you can figure out, there is NO open land inside that circle big enough for an airport

a 10 mile radius is the early post-war suburbs
is the Independence Square, downtown Raytown, The Bannister complex, Overland Park Medical Center, 82nd and parallel, The Deuce in Parkville, Platte Woods, Maple Woods, leasant Valley.

The only open land inside that circle is the Birmingham bottoms, the bottoms out west of Parkville

A 16.7 mile radius just means you go further out in the same two locations. There's open land near Independence is you could close a landfill and spend a few hundred million flatting the area. It also opens up farm land east of Liberty and north of 435. For this we would need a major road project. Neither seem better than the current spot. 15 miles opens up land south of I-70 in Edwardville but it's very hilly

At 20 miles out from downtown in all directions we still haven't got past Lee's Summit or Overland Park. We just So the open land is still to the north.

[loftguy]

The current airport is likely too far from Red Bridge, or Lee's Summit, or south Johnson county, according to those living there.

From downtown KCMo, it seems well placed.

[pash]

.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Close to downtown or not close to downtown is really immaterial. What is material is the amount of land available to build a new airport. And KC does not have a location closer in that is much better than it's current location. Good, bad, right, wrong the decision was made years ago when KC realized the downtown location was not sufficient in size for a modern airport. There was already an investment with the TWA Overhaul Base and that's where the new airport was built. So what, the airport is 20 miles away from downtown, or 20.5 miles. What is the travel time from the various airports and their nearby downtowns? For KCI and downtown the travel time isn't that much of an issue.

"The current airport is likely too far from Red Bridge, or Lee's Summit, or south Johnson county, according to those living there."
Lived in the Red Bridge area for many years and lived by someone who used the airport a few times every year. For the few times I used the airport I had no major complaint about the time or distance. Have flown twice in recent years living in Raymore, still no complaint even with a flight time of 8:00 in the morning. Would it have been nice that it was closer, like at RG? Yes, but I didn't lose any sleep over the issue nor was it worth the time or energy to seek to move it closer. And my neighbor, who few way more than I, had no complaints with the distance.

[Eon Blue]

To the people who may know: Was the TWA overhaul base in Platte County built there by the airline on its own, or was it developed by TPTB at the time as a Trojan Horse for a brand-new metro airport?

I remember reading that at one time Richards-Gerbaur was considered as a site for MCI but was discarded for reasons.

[KCPowercat]

Need to be closer to the airport? Plenty of houses to choose from. Spending tens of billions to chase population when it's very easy to get to the airport is silly.

[aknowledgeableperson]

From Wiki:
"The plant along with the airport opened in 1957 at a cost of $25 million and was marked an attempt to keep TWA in Kansas City following the Great Flood of 1951 which had destroyed TWA's facilities at Fairfax Airport close to the Missouri River. TWA's plant had been in the former North American Aviation B-25 Mitchell bomber plant at Fairfax. TWA labeled the building MCIE (after the airport's original name of Mid-Continent International Airport).[1] The airline also moved its large overhaul operations at the New Castle County Airport in Delaware to Kansas City.[2]"

From another source, flyvtwa.com/index.php/pages/historyoftwa :
"July, 1951
The Missouri River floods at Kansas City, extensively damaging the TWA overhaul base at Kansas City, Kansas, Fairfax Municipal Airport. In the aftermath of the flood TWA and Kansas City begin development of a new, flood-proof TWA overhaul base and a new international airport north of the city."
And:
"1957
TWA occupies its new $25 million maintenance and overhaul base at Mid- Continent International Airport, Kansas City. Fifteen years later, in 1972, commercial air service for the Kansas City region is relocated from TWA's long-time home at Municipal Airport to Mid- Continent, which is renamed Kansas City International Airport."

Why move from Downtown Airport? Maybe this, also from Wiki:
"The airport had limited area for expansion (Fairfax Airport across the Missouri River in Kansas City, Kansas covered a larger area). Airplanes had to avoid the 200-foot (60 m) Quality Hill and the Downtown Kansas City skyline south of the south end of the main runway. In the early 1960s an FAA memo called it "the most dangerous major airport in the country" and urged that no further federal funds be spent on it."
And:
"Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport covers an area of 700 acres (283 ha) at an elevation of 756 feet (230 m) above mean sea level.[1] It has two runways: 1/19 is 6,827 by 150 feet (2,081 x 46 m) with a concrete surface[1] (EMAS at south end)[4] and 3/21 is 5,050 by 100 feet (1,539 x 30 m) with an asphalt surface.[1]
Construction on runway 1-19 is complete and both runways are in use to their full length.
Taxiway H was at one time part of runway 17/35. This runway was closed after an FAA decision on the amount of required separation between terminal buildings and the runway.
The airport is on the north side of the confluence of the Kansas River and Missouri River. Levees protected the airport relatively well during the Great Flood of 1951 and the Great Flood of 1993 although there was standing water. The 1951 flood devastated the Fairfax airport and caused Kansas City to build what would become Kansas City International Airport away from the river to keep the TWA overhaul base in the area after it had been destroyed in the flood at Fairfax."


Now, to wrap it up. From www.airports-worldwide.com/usa/missouri/kansas_city...
"History

Kansas City Industrial Airport

The airport (originally informally called Kansas City Industrial Airport) was built after the Great Flood of 1951 destroyed the facilities of both of Kansas City's hometown airlines Mid-Continent Airlines and TWA at Fairfax Airport across the Missouri River from the city's main Kansas City Municipal Airport (which was not as severely damaged in the flood).

Fairfax was the main hub for passenger and airmail traffic handled by Mid-Continent. TWA had its main overhaul base in a former B-25 bomber factory at Fairfax, although TWA commercial flights flew out of the main downtown airport.

Kansas City was planning to build an airport that could handle 10,000-foot (3,000 m) runways and recognized that its expansion options were limited at the downtown airport.

At the time, Kansas City already owned Grandview Airport south of the city which had ample room for expansion. However, Kansas City chose to build an entirely new airport north of the city away from the Missouri River following intense lobbying by Platte County native Jay B. Dillingham, president of the Kansas City Stockyards which had also been destroyed in the flood.

The specific site just north of the then unincorporated hamlet of Hampton, Missouri was picked in May 1953 (with an anticipated cost of $23 million) under the guidance of City Manager L.P. Cookingham. Cookingham Drive is now the main access road to the airport. Ground was broken in September 1954. The first jet runways opened in 1956. At about the same time the city donated the southern Grandview Airport to the United States Air Force to become Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base.

The airport site was directly across U.S. 71 (now I-29) from the Red Crown Tourist Court where outlaws Bonnie & Clyde engaged in a 1933 shootout with law enforcement which ultimately resulted in the death of Clyde's brother Buck Barrow and the capture of Buck's wife Blanche Barrow.

Mid-Continent International Airport

Although Mid Continent merged with Braniff in 1952, Kansas City decided to name the new airport on the basis of Mid Continent's historic roots (serving the Mid-continent Oil Field).

TWA formally signed an agreement to move its overhaul base to the airport in 1954 in which the city built and owned the $18 million base but lease it back to TWA.

The downtown airport continued to have regularly scheduled passenger service until a 1963 Federal Aviation Agency memo called the downtown airport "one of the poorest major airports in the country for large jet aircraft" and recommended against spending any more federal dollars on it.

In addition to the meager expansion limits, there were questions whether the downtown site could handle the new Boeing 747. Jets had to make steep climbs and descents to avoid the downtown skyscrapers on the 200-foot (61 m) high Missouri River bluffs at Quality Hill at the south end of the runway. Further, Downtown Kansas City was right in the flight path for takeoffs and landings, resulting in a constant roar downtown while Mid-Continent was surrounded by open farm land.

TWA's "Airport of the Future"

In 1966 voters in a 24:1 margin approved a $150 million bond issue following a campaign by Mayor Ilus W. Davis to move the city's main airport to an expanded Mid-Continent. The city had considered building its new airport five miles (8 km) north of downtown Kansas City in the Missouri River bottoms as well as locations in southern Jackson County, Missouri, but decided to stick with the property it already owned.

As a side note, I guess KCMO struck the first blow in the economic development war by stealing these jobs from Kansas.