THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 17, 1995 TAG: 9507150274
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Here in southeast Virginia, they want to build a massive airfield, a superport, between Richmond and Hampton Roads.
Down in North Carolina, 120 miles southwest of Tidewater, they're talking about building a massive air facility at Kinston. They call the idea Global Transpark, a 30,000-acre industrial park and cargo airport where planes can roll up to the factory door.
Over in Raleigh, where they've tripled the number of airport boarding gates since 1987, they can handle 12 million passengers a year, though fewer than 7 million used the airport last year.
Out west, they've opened Denver International Airport, a $5 billion monument to glitches, cost overruns and a vision of Denver as a world city.
When it comes to airplanes and airports, the planners foresee big and bigger. It's no wonder. If steam rail ushered in the 20th century, Boeing 747s will usher it out. Look at Atlanta, not long ago a peer of Charlotte, Memphis and Richmond, and now, at 3.2 million population, the economic center of the Southeast.
Hardly anyone noticed a few decades ago when a little company with its origins as a muddy cropduster in the Mississippi Delta relocated to Atlanta and grandly called itself Delta Airlines.
In the early '60s, Delta gave Atlanta what no other city in the South had - superb air service to New York. Direct flights helped lure the sales offices, branches and divisions, first of the New York corporations looking for footholds in the Sun Belt, and then the London, Stuttgart and Tokyo corporations looking for footholds in North America.
Last fall, World Trade, a business magazine, ranked Atlanta as the top U.S. city for manufacturers intent on global sales. Not coincidentally, direct flights were available from Atlanta to 135 cities. In contrast, travelers can reach about 50 cities in the United States from Norfolk International Airport.
The problem we have in Eastern Virginia is we have three Triple A-type airports,'' said Arthur L. Collins, executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission.
Confined by geography, limited by population or both, the region's airports never became a major force, though the Newport News, Norfolk and Richmond airports together handle about 6 million passengers a year.
When planners in Washington a few years ago said the East Coast would need a new airfield within 30 years, a big one to relieve the congestion at the major-league airports, Richmond and Tidewater politicians and business executives banded together.
They figured the new field would draw international flights from Atlanta, New York and Washington and also provide Virginia with hub service to more U.S. cities.
``New airport capacity will be built east of the Mississippi, and the question is whether it will be built in Alabama or Virginia or somewhere else,'' Collins said.
Collins next month will hand the district commissioners a consultant's study that says Richmond, the Peninsula and the southside, with 2.4 million people, can support a major airport. Virginia's Department of Aviation then will begin selecting a site for the superport.
We already are that concept,'' said Rick Martinez, public affairs manager at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. In fact, the airport has expanded, accommodating American Airlines, which once operated 128 daily flights only to scale back to 16.
``Planners and promoters lose sight of the real-world costs,'' Martinez said. ``You have to have a population base to support a hub. It's expensive to support crews and personnel.''
Martinez, recently employed at Sky Harbor International Airport near Phoenix, population 2.4 million, sounded a warning - Phoenix rejected the superport idea embraced by Denver.
``Superports are out of vogue. They're expensive. People don't want to travel to them. Probably the biggest lesson the airport industry needs to learn from Denver is you can't gloss away the costs,'' Martinez said.
``United has decided to go in there, and they own Denver. They closed Stapleton International. The only choice the people of Denver have now is United,'' Martinez said. ``You will always have planners, and you will always hear them call for superports. But what is kind of discounted is: Do you hear the customers calling for a superport? Do you hear the airlines calling for a superport? Does the flying public really need a superport?'' by CNB