"Sea-Tac: Where do we grow from here?"

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Where do we grow from here? 
As Sea-Tac Airport approaches capacity, officials again might begin a search
for alternatives 
Using a statistical model for defining the future has been compared to
driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirror
BY JOHN GILLIE
The Tacoma (WA) News Tribune


It's still almost three years before the first airliner lands on Sea-Tac
Airport's third runway and months before construction crews put the
finishing touches on the airport's central terminal expansion project. 

But legislators already are pondering what to do when the region's major
airport runs out of room.

That day won't come until 2020 or 2021, when Sea-Tac planners project the
airport will handle more than 45 million passengers. The airport, after a
dip following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, hit a record in 2004 with
nearly 29 million passengers passing through its gates.

But planning can't begin soon enough because of the glacial pace of
decision-making when it comes to anything connected with enhancing airport
capacity. Winning political and legal approval for the airport's third
runway project took 17 years. 

"We've got to start planning now," said state Sen. Karen Keiser, the
planning bill's principal author. "Sea-Tac will be running out of room, and
we've got to be ready."

Among the ideas being raised:

 . Require airlines at Sea-Tac to use larger planes so they could carry more
passengers.

 . Move passengers to nearby destinations by other means, such as high-speed
rail.

 . Find a supplemental airport or build one.

Keiser's district abuts Sea-Tac, so she's one of a few legislators who could
sponsor an airport planning bill without fear of political repercussions.
Once the third runway - which Keiser, a Democrat, fought - is done, there is
no more room for the 2,500-acre airport to expand. Any additional passenger
capacity increases will have to happen somewhere else.
    
Keiser's constituents and others fought a drawn-out battle throughout the
'90s to find alternate airport sites, but ultimately lost after spending
some $15 million on legal attacks on the third runway plan. Opponents feared
the runway would bring more traffic; Sea-Tac officials said it will only add
landing capacity during bad weather.

Now, with the backing of a coalition of aviation interests, many of whom
fought each other on the third runway issue, Kaiser's air capacity planning
and study bill (SB 5121) is moving forward in the Legislature. Among those
backing her bill are the Port of Seattle, which owns Sea-Tac; Alaska
Airlines, the airport's biggest tenant; the Puget Sound Regional Council,
the region's planning agency; the King County Council; a handful of
legislative sponsors; and the state Department of Transportation.

The bill isn't in final form, but it contemplates first doing a statewide
air capacity study and a marketing report to determine where future air
travel demands will emerge and how the airlines want to meet them.

In the '80s and early '90s, both the Regional Council and the Port of
Seattle did volumes of studies on regional airport capacity issues. But
state aviation director John Sibold says the industry and the region have
changed so dramatically it's time for a fresh start to benchmark what the
needs are and how they can be handled.

"The industry and the state just aren't the same as the last time we took a
look," he said.

The airline business, for one, is still struggling to stabilize itself after
the post-Sept. 11, 2001, recession. Major airlines such as United and US
Airways are in bankruptcy reorganization, and new low-cost players such as
JetBlue Airways, Song and Independence Air are stealing market share from
the major players.

The tried-and-true hub-and-spoke route system is being challenged by more
point-to-point flying, bypassing hubs. Regional carriers that a decade ago
flew 19- and 37-seat turbo-props on routes up to 400 miles are now flying
70- and 90-seat regional jets on routes of up to 1,000 miles, Sibold said.

Airlines are re-examining every expense - from meals to manpower - to save
money. Those campaigns to cut costs have made airlines, which ultimately
must bear the cost of airport expansion and construction, more reluctant to
sign on for multibillion-dollar expansions.

Air carriers are now bypassing high-cost airports to serve lower-cost ones
where competition, landing fees and terminal rentals are less.

Southwest Airlines, for instance, has made an art of staying out of major
airports where costs are high. The Dallas-based airline has eschewed
Denver's new airport altogether, and in the Bay Area it serves only the
Oakland and San Jose airports, not San Francisco. In Texas, Southwest built
its empire from older, close-in Love Field instead of Dallas-Fort Worth
International Airport. In Houston, the low-cost carrier serves only Hobby
Airport, not George Bush International.

Changing economic conditions also have caused shifts in the way airlines
move passengers. Flights without profitable percentages of seats sold have
been pared from the schedules. That translates to fewer flights carrying
more passengers.

At Sea-Tac, for instance, the number of passengers handled last year set a
high, but the number of aircraft landings and takeoffs is still behind the
record set before the dot-com bust. Landings and takeoffs peaked at Sea-Tac
at 446,000 in 2000, but last year amounted to 389,000 despite record
passenger traffic.

The search for alternatives

Authorities caution that even new studies, particularly that look backward
at what's happened in the past, often don't accurately predict distant
future airport needs.

"Using a statistical model for defining the future has been compared to
driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirror," said air traffic
consultant Richard de Neufville in a 1992 study for the state. "While
focusing on past trends, it does not prepare us for the changes in
direction, for the uncertainties that lie ahead." 

Those who back Keiser's bill have been careful not to wave the red flag yet
about possible new airport sites. But after the marketing studies - expected
to take about three years - the search for alternate sites could be on
again.

Just the mention of new airport sites is enough to create a citizen
uprising, said Stu Creighton, a Normandy Park city councilman and a key
member of the Regional Council's airport planning committee in the early
'90s.

That committee had spent more than a year studying airport sites and had
culled them to 10. When the day came for the committee to narrow that list
to three, they were met by a demonstration outside the council meeting room
of about 300 Snohomish County residents who were there to see that no site
in their county was on the short list.

The regional council ducked the confrontation, Creighton recalled, and
passed a resolution naming the Sea-Tac third runway as the preferred
alternative. Later Creighton led the Airport Communities Coalition, an
alliance of near-airport communities that challenged the third runway
project in court.

Meeting new passenger demands need not necessitate building a new airport.

When Sea-Tac runs up to its limit or before, several approaches are
available to provide further transportation capacity:

 . Limit the total number of takeoffs and landings.

Airlines wanting to move more passengers would have to use larger planes.
Such an approach has worked in crowded Asian airports such as Tokyo's Narita
Airport, where most of the traffic arrives on giant wide-bodies such as
Boeing 747s and 777s and Airbus 380s.

 . Limit the number of operations during any hour to a maximum number.

Airlines wanting to fly more passengers from Sea-Tac would have to schedule
departures during the lulls between the airport rush hours. At Chicago's
O'Hare Airport, federal regulators jaw-boned airlines into rearranging their
schedules last summer when air traffic delays became intolerable during peak
hours. Major carriers also are "depeaking" their hub operations to allow
more time for passengers to transfer between flights. By spreading flight
arrivals over a longer time, airlines save money because they don't have to
staff for such high peak activity.

 . Develop high-speed rail to provide alternatives for shorter flights.

Washington and Amtrak have been carving time out of rail schedules between
Seattle and Portland and have increased train frequencies. But much remains
to be done to cut the time to the three-hour target with nine trains a day.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has proposed drastically whacking Amtrak
funding.

 . Open up other airports to commercial flights.

The most well-equipped Puget Sound alternate is Everett's Paine Field. The
airport has a 9,000-foot runway equipped with an instrument landing system.
It already has significant jet traffic from Boeing's wide-bodied aircraft
plant and Goodrich's aircraft overhaul facility. The field is equipped with
a rudimentary terminal. Some local politicians and business groups are
pressing for the beginning of regular commercial service there, but nearby
residents oppose it. 

Olympia's airport is another candidate for air service, but the last
commercial service there - which provided multiple daily flights to Spokane
- failed for lack of business.

The opening of an existing airport to new service depends on attracting an
interested airline.

In Southern California, for instance, Long Beach airport saw its limited
airline service dwindle in the '90s. When JetBlue was looking for a low-cost
airport serving a population distant from other airports, it picked Long
Beach as its West Coast hub. After JetBlue staked its claim, previously
uninterested airlines suddenly moved to re-establish or bolster their
service. American Airlines even sued to wrest slots from JetBlue.

An entirely new airport

If those alternatives fail or prove politically unacceptable, the region can
develop a new commercial airport from scratch.

Political concerns and constricting topography make this perhaps the most
difficult of alternatives.

Creighton said the airport study committee in the '90s determined a new
airport ideally should be at least 10,000 acres, compared with Sea-Tac's
2,500. That's about the size of the nation's capital's Washington Dulles
International Airport, opened in 1962. But that's significantly smaller than
Denver's 34,000 acres and Dallas-Fort Worth's 17,000 acres.

The last study identified a handful of sites that satisfied the standard,
but most were distant from populated areas and freeways.

"We studied some good potential sites in Kitsap County, for instance,"
Creighton said, "but how would people get there?"

Conditions might have changed during the last 10 years, so some of those
sites might no longer qualify because of residential expansion or other
factors.

Dozens of major new airports have been proposed in the United States in the
last three decades, but only one new major commercial airport has been
built: Denver's.

And Denver had the advantage of thousands of acres of flat farmland east of
that city as potential airport sites, a luxury Seattle doesn't have. And
Denver's new airport had some instant allies in residents near the close-in
Stapleton Airport, which closed when the new airport opened in 1995. It's
unlikely a new airport will replace Sea-Tac.

Elusive solutions

San Diego has struggled for decades with the question of replacing or
supplementing its near-downtown airport, Lindbergh Field. Lindbergh has just
one runway, the approach to which passes over residential areas and abuts
downtown. The airport habitually ranks No. 1 on pilots' lists of least-safe
airports because of its shorter runway and difficult approaches. And the
airport's limitations have had a material effect on air service available to
San Diego residents.

But though many ideas have been proposed, none has emerged as a solution to
San Diego's airport problems.

In Chicago, political forces and airlines are locked in a battle over
whether to expand and reconfigure O'Hare, the world's second-busiest
airport, or to build a new reliever airport south of the Windy City in
Peotone.

Airlines want O'Hare expanded. Near-O'Hare cities and civic boosters from
the South Side of Chicago favor Peotone. So far, there's no resolution in
sight.

Some say the Seattle solution might be a distant airport connected to the
metropolitan region by high-speed transit. During the last round of airport
studies, Moses Lake suggested its vast airport with its 13,000-foot runway
would be a good candidate. Officials there said a bullet train could connect
the airport with Seattle. That idea proved too expensive and the airport too
far distant.

Civic leaders from job-starved Grays Harbor County even offered to donate
50,000 acres as an airport site, Creighton remembered. But since the site
was outside the Regional Council's jurisdiction, the committee couldn't
consider it.

Creighton believes that whatever airport - new or existing - eventually
supplements Sea-Tac, it should be sited north of Seattle.

Some 40 percent of Sea-Tac's business comes from passengers who live outside
of Seattle to the north, he said.

As commuting by car becomes even more difficult, providing air service to
the north makes sense because Sea-Tac already well serves the area south of
downtown Seattle, he said.

Attached Photo/Graph:

Many see Paine Field in Everett as the most well-equipped airport to handle
commercial airlines should Seattle-Tacoma International Airport reach its
capacity. Paine has a 9,000-foot runway with an instrument landing system,
and it already sees jet traffic for Boeing's wide-bodied aircraft plant and
Goodrich's overhaul facility.

Sea-Tac Airport Passenger Traffic.

BIZ0227_AIRPORT_P1-thumb.jpg

sea-tac traffic.jpg