"Plan ensures Nashville airport blueprint no flight of fancy"

Monday, August 4, 2003

Plan ensures airport blueprint no flight of fancy
By Roy Moore
The Nashville (TN) Business Journal


Facing increasing demand and changes in the aviation industry, the
Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority has updated its master plan to
include air cargo development, consolidated rental car facility and a
federal inspection service area at Nashville International Airport. 
  
The completed plan, which has been approved by the airport authority board
of directors, includes more cargo aprons, taxiway extensions, terminal area
roadway improvements, reconfiguration of the general aviation area and
accommodations for corporate aviation. 

The final product comes two years after officials set about updating the
20-year master plan and a decade after an earlier version. 

When the additions and modifications are completed, the airport will look
substantially different than it does today, says Raul Regalado, airport
authority president and CEO. That's excluding the passenger terminal
complex, whose interior will be renovated in the next five years but whose
outside will look the same. 

Toward the end of the decade is a planned runway extension, which should
give the airport the capacity for direct flight from Nashville to overseas.
Taking place around 2009-10, the project should lengthen one runway by 3,300
feet to 11,002 feet in all. 

The plans come as the airport has seen cargo transportation and corporate
flight become more pronounced. Last August, China Airlines began flying
between Nashville and Taipei and expanded its air cargo service earlier this
year to six flights per week. 

If cargo and corporate aviation continue to grow, that could be good news
for the passenger sector, Regalado says. 

"We operate on a single cash drawer basis," he says. "Basically, what that
means is whatever shortfall we have from non-airlines and expenses, the
airlines have to make that up. So the less the shortfall, the less the
airlines have to make up." 

The timeframe for construction on individual projects isn't set, but will
depend on demand as measured by planning activity levels and approval from
the community. In 2000, the airport reported more than 4.5 million
passengers, 65,000 tons of air cargo and 250,000 aircraft operations. When
activity reaches 5 million passengers, 72,600 tons of cargo and 269,900
aircraft operations, the first level of the plan kicks in. Projects are
added as these figures grow, eventually reaching the fourth level of 9.5
million passengers, 217,000 tons of cargo and 436,700 aircraft operations. 

"We build facilities to accommodate the demand," Regalado says. "We don't
build spec facilities. So as the demand warrants, we will build the
facilities." 

With some projects already under way, continual development of the airport
has become a steady source of revenue for some companies. The
self-sustaining airport bids contracts for the projects, using companies
based in Nashville and around the country. 

At Gresham Smith & Partners, which designed the original terminal at the
Nashville airport, aviation principal Carl Munkel says his company is doing
subconsulting work on a security project at the airport and keeps an eye out
for potential projects there. 

"That's right in our backyard and we do a lot of aviation work nationwide,"
he says.


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