New Atlanta airport master plan eyes new gates, sixth runway (Clayton: how much, home)

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by AtlantaIsHot

There has been an interesting development in the world airport statistics. I went to the Airports Council's website and they have updated statistics through May, I think. While for the month, O'Hare slightly outpaced Hartsfield in aircraft movements, Hartsfield was still ahead for the year by a significant margin. Moreover, Atlanta's growth was much higher. Something has taken the wind out of Dubai's sail somewhat. After posting double-digit growth rates of 15% at the time of the last update, Dubai's growth rate has slackened to 9.2%. Dubai's airport posted a -2.5% DECLINE for the last month data are available. Atlanta posted a growth rate of +3.4% for the same month. Beijing posted a growth of +0.6% for the month. I don't know what sucked the wind out of Dubai's sail but if this continues, Atlanta could potentially retain the world's busiest title for 2014 as it is ahead of Dubai by over 8,000,000 through May. However, this is a number that could be overtaken if Dubai returns to high growth.

O'Hare will up the ante soon also with new runways and better design. They have stated a goal of dethroning Atlanta and taking the title back. We're in the middle of airport warfare it seems-each one wants to be #1.

Don't get sucked into the horse race so much. At the end of the day it has little to nothing to do with how well ATL serves Atlanta, ORD serves Chicago, etc...

Even then month-to-month numbers mean nothing.

So the story with Dubai... It isn't that big of an airport, but what they are/do is attract connections that are primarily long-haul flights between Asia and Europe. Few takeoffs/landings, but a very high frequency of passengers on very large planes. The Asia-Europe runs are a rapidly growing market. These are also expensive and more volatile with shifts in the economy.

Eventually, other airlines and other cities will follow suit as demand rises and more competition will occur.

ORD is the opposite. They have a higher frequency of planes, but fewer passengers to show for it. Both of their hub airlines are heavily invested into other major hubs as well.

[jsvh]

Yea, ATL may have a lot of people and planes going through it, but it is efficient and consistent. I need to allow extra time at other smaller airports because you never know when the TSA might be slow or some other line you did not expect or need to take a bus to another terminal.

[Robbyb03]

Originally Posted by bu2

Given how common it is to have to circle the Atlanta airport and how often you have to wait for gates on the runway, I would say its not too efficient for flyers. Maybe its efficient for Delta.

"Circle the airport..." What are you talking about? Rarely do aircraft circle the airport. If you land on the north side, you most likely take the Victor loop so you don't have to cross an active departure runway. Depending on the operation (east/west) you may have to wait for departing traffic on the south side or you simply taxi behind the departures.

I can assure you that no one "waits for gates on the runway."

[cqholt]

http://i.imgur.com/HL4jqNm.gif

[Robbyb03]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

no, it really is efficient.

More plans can get in and out of Hartsfield quicker and cheaper. Operations can be more streamlines, less staffing is needed. It is extremely efficient and the airport often wins awards for that. Many new airports are more or less copying the general layout of ATL to try to achieve this.

Check out various renderings for future site improvements to LAX as an example.

Also the circling really died away with the addition of the 5th runway some years back. The only time I ever circle now is due to weather events.... And that is with it being the busiest airport in the world.

Thank goodness there is someone intelligent here... We get visitors from all of the world that come and watch the operation here to see if they can make their airports more efficient. (Example: Beijing controllers/airport designers/dignitaries visited for weeks to watch the operation before they designed and built the currently expanded Beijing airport (before '08 Olympics). Every airport is trying to emulate Atlanta at the moment and the reason is because it is outrageously efficient.

[tikigod311]

Such a cool gif. Showed that to a friend who works in ATC and he said "Oh yeah, I remember that day". He was one of the people working those patterns and apparently that gif comes from some training material. That is so incredibly impressive.

[Robbyb03]

I'm pretty sure that GIF is from about three Fridays ago, but I could be wrong... There is a departure one and an arrival one, both are very impressive.

[emcee squared]

Originally Posted by bu2

Given how common it is to have to circle the Atlanta airport and how often you have to wait for gates on the runway, I would say its not too efficient for flyers. Maybe its efficient for Delta.

Do you mean circling the airport, as in a holding pattern, or taxiing around until your assigned gate is available? The later doesn't really happen, as you would hold short of your assigned gate until the gate crew is ready.

[cwkimbro]

Ok so I want to change the tone of the conversation here a bit.

Originally the past master plan called for a 5th runway, which was built, and a south midfield terminal located between runways 4 and 5.

Then Delta argued for a 6th runway, which actually does have some merits, but the arguments were it should go north of runway 5... not south, which would be more expensive and require a taxiway bridge over the interstate, rerouting of roads and buyout of many industrial buildings and some hotels.

Now this plan calls for more gates in the same current mid-field that exist today and moving cargo operations between runways 4 and runways 5&6.

My question is this....

Should the plan be swapped to move the new gates south and the new cargo areas east of the current international terminal?

My theory is this... Our airport was built for efficiency (FYI: Rebuilt from scratch in the 70s not saving the existing gates and terminal just to achieve this efficiency). Already the taxi time form runway 5 is enormous and it leads to many planes crossing runways. It will get worse with 4 runways south of all passenger terminals. The new ramp around the end of runway 3 is great, but still a very long taxi from runway 5

It actually makes sense to have some gates, especially O&D gates south so planes can efficiently use runways 5 and 6 without crossing runways 3 and 4.

The benefits and drawbacks are the following:
-Room for a new terminal
-further decentralizes terminal
-requires expensive upgrade for people move system from southgates to main terminal (previously planned on original master plan)
-requires upgrade for luggage transfer operations
-Easy access to to extend existing skytrain to ground transportation and the rental car center, which allows for secure and unsecured travel to main terminal.
-plane flow on the ground would be far more efficient; better access, less delays, and could handle more planes

There would be limited rooms for new gates unless we build runway 6 south of runway 5 (more expensive).

However, there would be far more expansion room past the 2030 master plan as there would be 2 near equal size mid-fields to work with. and not the little existing space this plan is essentially completely using up.

So in recap... I see 3 main options

1) This plan; new gates easy of the international terminal (keeps current layout and easy access to main terminal, limited room for growth beyond this plan, doesn't create a big southern mid-field, less efficient ground trafficking of planes)

2)This plan, but swap the new cargo area and the new east gates (makes ground trafficking of planes more efficient, potential for a 3rd southern terminal, requires expansive people mover/luggage system upgrade, doesn't require expensive land acquisitions, limited/no room for future growth beyond this 2030 plan.

3) Create a 6th runway south of runway 5 (much more expensive, requires heavy land acquisition, creates a larger southern mid-field that essentially allows the airport to double in size going into the future and could handle upgrades well past 2060 and not just this 2030 plan, beneficial for competing O&D/non-hub airlines to compete)

These are things that have actually been discussed in past threads years ago. I'll see if I can dig them up so conceptual images can be shown.

[cwkimbro]

http://i644.photobucket.com/albums/u...gphoto/ATL.jpg

This conceptual image someone else posted shows how a 6th runway could be made for concept choice 3. This shows for what land would need to be bought and what roads would need to be moved. There are some minor problems that are not accounted for here that needs to be altered... but more or less it shows what would need to be done.



This shows the old master plan with the new southern midfield that would make plane ground traffic more efficient with the new runways.

Option 2 would be a simple swap of the already posted current plan.