Major Metros with more than one airport vs. Major Metros with one airports

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by KinBueno

Looking at the history, it looks like consolidation for efficiency was more to blame than mere airport expansion. It looks like most metros decreased their number of commercial airports rather than simply building new ones as the metro grows.
Houston for example went from half a dozen to almost every thing consolidated into IAH and Hobby.

I am old enough to remember when we had dozens of major airlines. Now we are down to less than 10. I am almost certain Atlanta would have had at least 5 commercial airports if Delta wasn't so dominant. It makes more sense for an airline to expand their footprint in an airport than to spread around wihin the metro at multiple smaller airports.

So no, it's not merely lack of space to grow. Although that may be a factor, I think it's more the evolution of the airline industry into a few huge airlines rather than dozens of big ones

Something else to consider is the advent of first, jet transport, then of bigger jet planes.

The era when many cities had multiple airports with scheduled service pretty much coincided with the era when the Douglas DC-3 was the workhorse of passenger air transport. The first small jets could operate on the same runways as the prop planes and turboprops, but the larger ones like the Boeing 707 needed longer runways, and it didn't make much economic sense to lengthen the runways at secondary airports. So instead, the smaller airports lost their scheduled service while airlines began to concentrate their operations at one principal airport serving a city — with the exception of the largest one, New York, which had enough traffic to justify multiple facilities.

But in some cases, land constraints prevented some still-viable airports (e.g., Washington National, Chicago Midway) from handling the largest jets, especially the new jumbo jets that began flying in 1969 with the debut of the Boeing 747. This led to the development of additional airports that had enough land to build longer runways, like Orchard Field in Chicago (now O'Hare Airport), Dulles International Airport outside Washington, (George Bush) Houston Intercontinental Airport and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The smaller airports in all four of these cities remain in service, often serving as hubs for discount carriers (Southwest Airlines began service when all the other major airlines serving Dallas relocated to DFW, leaving Dallas Love Field vacant, SWA took it over; its ticker symbol reflects the airline's original home base).

[NW4me]

For a top-20 metro, San Diego is quite underserved in terms of airport capacity:
only one airport, and that airport having only one runway.

[mhays25]

Agreed, despite also including the cross-border airport for service to the south.


I suspect the lack of airport capacity is why SD isn't much larger as a city, a tourist center, a business center, etc.

[Princeofthrift]

The only international metropolitan area in the United States has three international airports.

El Paso
Las Cruces
and
Juarez

While Las Cruces is 60-miles from El Paso, Juarez is theoretically just a few miles/minutes. You're going across the border can be very time consuming.

[mhays25]

Technically a lot of cities have a variety of international airports, at least by official designation (not necessarily by regular scheduled flights). Seattle has four off the top of my head -- KCIA, Sea-Tac, Paine, and Lake Union (the actual lake, which does have regular international service).