"Rapid City airport looks at wider concourse"

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Airport looks at wider concourse
By Dan Daly
The Rapid City (SD) Journal


RAPID CITY -- Rapid City Regional Airport is looking at plans to address its
bottleneck problem.

The bottleneck is the second-floor bridgeway between the main terminal and
the elevated concourse where boarding gates are located. The bridgeway is
where the Transportation Security Administration screeners check passengers
and their carry-on bags.

In 1988, when the airport terminal was constructed, passenger screening was
minimal at best. But since the Sept. 11, 2001, airline terrorist attacks on
New York and Washington, airport screening has become much more thorough --
and space consuming.

The bridgeway now houses two lanes of screening equipment with X-ray
machines, metal detectors and a bevy of TSA workers checking passengers as
they pass through. There's also a narrow hallway for arriving passengers to
reach the terminal.

Airport officials looked Monday at construction plans that would, among
other things, nearly double the width of the second-floor bridgeway --
making it as wide as the concourse itself.

Mike Mahoney of the HNTB architecture and engineering company, which is
working with local firm TSP on the project, outlined two alternatives for
the Airport Board Monday.

Mahoney said the current bridge is not wide enough to handle the flow of
passengers back and forth. "The airport is about to become
gate-constrained," Mahoney told airport board members.

In fact, with the addition of Frontier Airlines service to Denver and the
upcoming Allegiant Air service to Phoenix, airline traffic is expected to
increase at Rapid City Rapid City Regional Airport in coming years.

At the recent Boyd Group Aviation Forecast Conference, air traffic
forecasters predicted that Rapid City would be the third-fastest-growing
airport between 2008 and 2013, said airport Executive Director Mason Short,
who attended the conference.

The Boyd Group, an aviation-planning firm based in Denver, predicted that
traffic at Rapid City Regional Airport would increase 36 percent by 2013.
Passengers will number 646,000 a year by then, according to the forecast.

Short also said people will be arriving and departing during the peak flying
hours, which would make the current security area more of a bottleneck than
it already is.

Mahoney's first alternative would widen the second-floor bridgeway along its
west side. There would be room for two lanes of passenger screening
equipment, possibly three lanes. In addition, the concourse would be
reconfigured to add bathrooms, update passenger-seating areas and make more
room for TSA workers.

But Mahoney also floated a second alternative, one that would make all those
changes and also create a lower-level passenger waiting area. 

The floor of this area would be 7-1/2 feet below the floor of the main
concourse and 4-1/2 feet above the concrete apron where the planes load
passengers. Mahoney said that's about the height of doorways of most
regional jets and smaller aircraft -- popular for airlines, especially for
short flights to Denver.

Passengers could board more easily from this low-to-the-ground level,
Mahoney said.

People standing on the main concourse could look over a railing and see down
to the new passenger area. And the entire west wall of the new area would be
made of glass, offering a sweeping floor-to-ceiling view of the Black Hills.

The higher construction costs, he said, would be somewhat offset by a less
expensive jet bridge, the mechanical passageway that swings out from the
gate to the aircraft. It would be less expensive because it would be on the
same level as the aircraft.

The airport board took no action on the proposal Monday. Funding issues
still need to be worked out, and construction could start sometime next fall
and be completed by the fall of 2008.

 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************