Between January and October 2019, more than 14 million customers traveled through the airport, and by the end of the year, after the flurry of busy holiday travel, the airport’s Executive Director of Aviation Jacqueline Yaft said that passenger number is expected to reach a record 17 million.
For now, Yaft said, the airport is equipped to handle all the passenger traffic and provide customers with a good experience. It added nine gates this year in a $350 million project to increase capacity, along with a parking garage with 6,000 spaces.
However, the population growth in Central Texas is not expected to slow down, and the airport needs to keep up with that growth if it is going to continue serving Austin residents and tourists effectively, Yaft said.
In November 2018, Austin City Council approved the airport’s 2040 Master Plan, a document that lays out a $4 billion vision of the airport’s expansion over the next two decades, from added gates to roadway improvements that will help ease traffic in the area.
Now that the framework has been established, Yaft said the airport has to get into the nuts and bolts of the capital improvement plan. An executive advisory consulting team has been brought on board to prioritize construction projects and lay out a phased plan in order to stay on track to reach the goals the master plan has laid out.
“We definitely want to be aligned with the city’s growth and not be behind the ball of not having the capacity of being able to serve that business,” Yaft said. “Sometimes you see airports that are behind on making the decision to expand, and we definitely don’t want to be there.”
Yaft said meetings with the consultants and stakeholders will likely run through early or mid-2020, at which point the airport will be ready to send out requests for proposals and solicit bids on some construction projects.
In November, the city expressed an interest in buying back the operating rights to the airport’s south terminal from the company that currently runs the facility—Highstar Capital. While Yaft could not comment on ongoing negotiations, she wrote in a Nov. 7 memo to City Manager Spencer Cronk and Assistant City Manager Gina Fiandaca that a “fair valuation of the leasehold interest” for the south terminal would be $10 million.
While the aviation department is under the city of Austin’s umbrella, it is funded by revenue generated at the airport, meaning no taxpayer dollars are used for either the master plan projects or the potential south terminal purchase.
Yaft said operations will not change at the south terminal should the city purchase back the leasehold, and customers should expect “business as usual” for the Allegiant Air and Frontier flights operating there.
The additional gates the airport is planning to add as part of its master plan would be constructed as a stand-alone facility, and Yaft said the city would put itself in a better position for long-term planning if it took over the operating rights.
“We need to start the conversation about the south terminal now to make sure that we align the future of the south terminal, the future of the main terminal and the other new facility that we will be building,” she said.
