The details
The improvements add 20,600 square feet of additional space, including expanded passenger queuing areas, new baggage claim carousels and upgraded processing facilities for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Some key features of the International Arrivals project include:
- Baggage Carousels 6 and 7 are now enabled for dual use that can serve both international and domestic flights.
- Baggage Carousel 8 used as a dedicated carousel for international arrivals that can handle oversized luggage, eliminating the need for manual handling.
- Expanded queuing and processing areas providing more space and improved passenger flow, reducing wait times and crowding during peak arrival times.
The expanded space utilized the terminal’s existing footprint and is expected to make it quicker for international travelers to get through customs, said Ghizlane Badawi, CEO of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
The new configuration will have travelers screened by customs first before collecting baggage, Badawi explained.
Austin City Council member Vanessa Fuentes said the improvements also benefit the local economy.
“The impact of the project goes far beyond the terminal,” Fuentes said. “... Our local and small businesses benefit right here, right at home. More travelers mean more opportunities for Austin's restaurants, our shops, our service providers and our cultural experiences.”
Mayor Kirk Watson said this is just the first step in making sure the airport can keep pace with record-breaking demand.
“Austin is a big international city now; people want to come here,” Watson said.
A study conducted in 2019 projected the Austin airport to reach 30 million annual passengers by 2037. Today, it’s projected to reach that number of passengers by 2027, according to ABIA documents.
In 2022, the city-owned airport experienced its busiest year on record. The year’s total passenger count was approximately 21.1 million passengers, about 55% more than 2021.
“When you have something like that happen here, when you have that sort of travel increase six years ahead of schedule, it means you're six years behind on what you need to be doing with regard to your infrastructure,” Watson said. “That's part of the reason you're seeing us so aggressive, but thoughtfully, doing the work we need to do to play catch up.”
The outlook
Austin's airport is expected to keep growing, even after current expansion, according to airport officials.
Although ABIA is in the midst of its $4 billion expansion that will add a new terminal and increase capacity, officials expect additional upgrades will be needed soon after the current project concludes in 2030, said Shane Harbinson, chief development officer with the city’s aviation department, during a panel discussion on the airport April 23.
“It's a parallel concourse design instead of a pier design. Following that theme, we can go up to about 75 to 80 million passengers a year building concourse B, C, D, E and F,” Harbinson said. “... The infrastructure we're doing today is setting the table up for that development plan.”
He said current plans for Concourse B are expected to accommodate about 32 million passengers annually, meeting the city's projections through 2040.
Jeremy Martin, the president and CEO of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, considers the airport's growth an important driver for the region’s business community.
“Air service is a key priority for [global hubs], especially headquartered companies, as they are trying to connect with their operations across the globe,” he said. “If we don’t have good connection then we are not even considered."
Concerns
Though demand continues to rise, the airport still lacks sufficient air traffic controllers—something that is not overseen by airport or city officials, but by the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA.
The control tower at ABIA is supposed to have 60 fully certified air traffic controllers, according to FAA targets. However, as of February there are a total of 32 fully certified professional controllers and another 9 in training, according to data obtained by Community Impact through the Freedom of Information Act.
Staffing levels are only 53% to the target, making ABIA among the top most understaffed airports in the nation, according to the most recent data reported by the FAA.
“Right now we have a very serious issue. We have an air traffic controller tower that is only half staffed,” Fuentes said. “What keeps me up at night is ‘How are we making sure we have a safer airport?’ The federal aviation agency must do more to ensure that we have the right people in place to be able to have safe air travel.”
In recent years, there have been several reports of near-miss incidents at the Austin airport. Both local and federal officials have called on the FAA for increased support.
“It shows our air traffic controllers are overworked, overwhelmed and understaffed,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said in a statement following a 2023 incident. “... To assure our airport is safe we need more air traffic controllers sooner to relieve those currently subject to mandatory, unsustainable six-day work weeks.”
Recent months have also seen multiple forced plane groundings due to staffing issues, resulting in countless delays during one of the airport's busiest seasons.
In late 2024, the FAA announced that the agency had hired 1,811 new air traffic controllers—the largest number of hires in nearly a decade, according to a news release.
As part of the FAA’s ongoing efforts to increase the pipeline of air traffic controllers, the agency also continuously recruits controllers with prior air traffic experience from the military and private industry, the release states.
In addition to new hires, the Austin airport received among the first deployments of the FAA’s new Surface Awareness Initiative system in July 2024, a “game changer for air traffic control,” according to a news release from ABIA.
The system gives air traffic controllers real-time, bird's-eye views of everything happening on the ground on the airport’s runways, taxiways and other parts of the airfield.
Quote of note
“So the bottom line is, we're going to continue to do what I and others have been doing, which is advocating at the federal government. We need to fill those jobs,” Watson said.
