Airport plans in holding pattern

Thursday, Oct. 11, 2001 | 10:12 a.m.

Expansion plans at McCarran International Airport are on indefinite hold, a result of fewer airline passengers and commercial flights since Sept. 11.

Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker said most expansion plans are on hold -- not canceled -- because of reduced passenger volume.

"Everything we do is based on the number of passengers we expect to have," he said.

Walker said people shouldn't assume that planned expansion projects won't happen. The status of some big-budget, planned capital projects will be evaluated on a month-to-month basis, he said.

"It's really too early to tell," he said. "We are still responding to something that happened one month ago. If traffic comes back, we will have to build things."

The airport is operating at about 90 percent of its pre-attack volume. It is a dramatic shift for an airport that has consistently had some of the highest growth rates in the world.

The airport had about 25.2 million passengers pass through its gates from January through August, a 3 percent increase over last year's numbers. But between 1999 and 2000, the number of passengers jumped 9 percent.

The airport handled about 37 million passengers -- flying in and out -- all of last year.

Before the attacks, the airport had projected 55 million passengers by 2010 and the need to open a new commercial airport near the California state line in the Ivanpah Valley.

Walker said two projects are the first to be affected by the hold:

* A $120 million consolidation, slated for completion in 2004, of rental car companies on an 80-acre site a few miles off airport grounds.

* Construction of a third wing on the outlying D-Gates, also pegged to open in 2004, at a cost of about $100 million.

Other, longer-term projects are going forward, Walker said, though they too may be affected later.

Planning and land purchases for a new airport in the Ivanpah Valley near the California state line are proceeding, he said. The $1 billion project is slated to open in 2010 or 2011.

And road realignment, including the purchase of 440 homes along Russell Road, also is going forward. Ramp renovation at the A and B gates is continuing as well, he said.

Shashi Nambisan, a University of Nevada at Las Vegas professor and director of the school's Transportation Research Center, said all forms of McCarran's revenue could be affected by the downturn.

The airport doesn't use county taxpayer subsidies but depends on revenue from landing, passenger and parking fees and rent for concessions, Nambisan noted. So, downturns in those revenue sources could affect capital-intensive expansion programs.

A stagnating national economy already had affected passenger numbers before the Sept. 11 attacks, Nambisan said. He noted that the 3 percent growth rate so far this year is one-third of the growth the airport had the year before.

"If the economy goes down, people cut discretionary spending," Nambisan said. Discretionary spending includes money spent on vacations in Las Vegas.

Walker said one impact of the downturn in passenger numbers has been positive. High passenger volume was frequently cited as one cause for delays, which affected up to one-quarter of all flights nationally.

Before the attacks, many airports were operating at or above their official flight capacity. While weather and capacity issues usually don't originate at McCarran, the problems would occur at so-called hub airports and affect flights serving Las Vegas.

"It appears that we aren't having the same number of daily problems," Walker said. He said the airport doesn't yet have hard data to back up the perception that delays aren't as frequent as they were before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Even before the attacks, air traffic nationally was flat and revenue per passenger was down 10 percent, said aviation industry consultant Michael Boyd.

He forecasts that 230 million fewer passengers will fly in the next five years than would have otherwise because of the attacks and that demand will not fully recover until 2005 or 2006.

From Boston to San Francisco, airports are delaying building runways and terminals or are reconsidering planned additions as passengers remain jittery about flying and airlines keep planes grounded.

Airports that have curtailed or are reconsidering expansion plans since Sept. 11 include:

* Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport, which stopped most of the airport's $1.2 billion expansion, including preliminary work on a $650 million terminal to replace two existing ones.

* Los Angeles International Airport, which scaled back its expansion plans to emphasize security over capacity. A revised plan would increase the airport's capacity to 78 million passengers per year by 2015, instead of the 89 million previously envisioned.

* Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, which is freezing nonessential construction and may delay the opening of a new runway that was scheduled to open in December 2003.

* Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, N.C., which is delaying several projects, including plans for a fourth runway at a cost of $80 million.

* San Francisco International Airport, which has halted plans to renovate a domestic terminal and build a new airport hotel but remains determined to change its status as the nation's most delay-plagued airport by expanding its runways. Officials assume passenger traffic will return to pre-attack levels by the time the runway project is ready for construction.

* Logan International Airport in Boston, where two of the airplanes hijacked on Sept. 11 originated. Officials will meet this week to decide whether to proceed with the final phases of a 10-year, $4 billion renovation, including the addition of a new runway.

Some airports, seeing a need for expansion even with the drop in traffic, are pushing ahead.

Texas' Dallas-Ft. Worth airport broke ground Sunday on a $2.6 billion expansion that includes a new international terminal and an automated people-mover system.

At Atlanta's airport, the nation's busiest, officials are still planning to build a $1.3 billion fifth runway, despite renewed criticism over the cost and concerns about declining air traffic.

And in St. Louis, the first phase of a $1.4 billion expansion plan, including construction of a 9,000-foot runway, will continue even though the airport has lost about $112,000 per day in passenger fees, parking receipts and concession income since Sept. 11.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.