SeaTac airport does not appear to be designed with the convenience and safety of the paying passengers in mind, nor is it even able to effectively handle large numbers of those passengers, especially with recent increased security measures that have been taken. It was not designed to minimize adverse impact on traffic congestion, nor maximize the potential economic benefits for the surrounding communities. In short, it is just another badly designed airport that most people would rather minimize their exposure to, and which in some ways adversely affects their lives. The rebuilding of Concourse A turned out to be just a perpetuation of the same problematic design.
All passengers and cargo starting or ending air travel at SeaTac uses the public roadway to arrive at or leave the airport. During 2008 the Port Authority states SeaTac handled 32,196,528 passengers, and 290,653 metric tons of cargo. There do not appear to be statistics available on how many of those passengers and how much of that cargo started or ended its air travel at this airport, but one could guess at least 20% of the passengers, if not more. This is on average 17,640 passengers per day. For private automobiles and taxis, this means at least one trip to and back from the airport, and possibly two (my understanding is that taxis under contract with the airport must arrive at the airport empty, and those not under contract must leave the airport empty). Passenger levels grew at 2.9% over 2007, and one presumes that 2009 will be only slightly less than 2008 with the recession slowdown (last reported to be 4-5%).
Airline passengers whose starting point or destination is SeaTac not only are adversely affected by the uncertainties of local traffic, but also contribute to those uncertainties. Businesses and passengers normally do not like uncertainty: gas price volatility; traffic jams; traffic accidents; a full airport parking lot; slow downs entering the airport while each automobile is searched; etc.
Questions to which I do not know the answer are: How much business is lost just because one cannot get to or from the airport in a consistent and reliable amount of time, not to mention a short amount of time? Not only business lost to the area companies, but also to the airlines when travel plans are curtailed by companies and individuals. How much is growth stunted, or businesses driven away? Boeing listed transportation and access to its clients as an issue in moving its headquarters. Would a truly functional airport have helped changed their decision? Did building a third runway to force even more passengers and cargo through the same airport make sense when basic local airport access problems remain unsolved (yes, there are other good reasons for a third runway, and this is not a diatribe against it)?
The latest recommendation from SeaTac is that passengers must continue to arrive earlier for flights for the foreseeable future. I cannot help but think that this eliminates any superiority air travel has over ground transportation for destinations closer than at least 4-5 hours ground travel time in distance (given the added time to de-plane, exit the airport, rent an automobile, and return the vehicle on the return trip). In fact, a recent study indicated that the break-even point for driving rather than flying is now 500 miles, which is over 8 hours driving time at 60 mph. Having traveled recently by air through SeaTac, the slowdowns once one has reached the airport are quite apparently first at passenger check-in, along with random luggage search, and second at the single entry point to each concourse where the security check is performed for a portion of the on average 945 flights each day (345,242 flights per year for 2008).
Although this single entry point to the concourse seems on first glance to be a proper and efficient solution to keeping the area secure, there appears to be a problem once that single point is breached, given the huge area within the secure area. Events that illustrate the problem are the shutdown of SeaTac on November 12 when a person ignored a directive to stop after going through the security check. An estimated 7000 people were evacuated and re-screened, delaying 50 flights for several hours. Another single point security breach on November 16 in Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport shut down the airport for 4 hours while 10,000 people were evacuated to be re-screened and 100's of flights were diverted or delayed. Flight delay ripples continued for many hours afterwards. A third example is of an unplugged x-ray machine at SeaTac on November 24, which delayed 100 flights up to 3 hours, and 1000's of passengers, who had to be re-screened after being evacuated from all the concourses (which also had to be checked by security workers and bomb-sniffing dogs).
An interesting item noted on NPR was the reduction in luggage theft after the no-waiting rule was strictly enforced post-September. This is where people in an automobile stop outside the doors to a luggage carousel, while one of their member goes in, picks up some luggage, brings it back to the automobile to sift through, then takes it back after removing desired items.
A large concentration of businesses have developed around SeaTac. The economic growth in and of itself it not bad, however it does not help the economic development of outlying communities nearly as much as it could.
Recently, in order to ensure my family and I would be on time for an 8am flight from our Duvall/Woodinville area starting point, we began our day at 4:30am. We left the house at 5am with children in tow in a private automobile (not trusting a shuttle to be on time), and arrived at the airport at 5:45, and got in line. The airport recommends arriving 2 hours before a flight, but given the uncertainties of transport to the airport itself, we arrived even earlier. It was a good thing we did so, as the line doubled at 6am, just 15 minutes later. If we had arrived later I believe the check-in and security lines would have made us late.
We had plenty of time once at the gate after a long walk to the far end of the concourse. I assume that such concourses are convenient for airlines, but hold no such convenience for their paying passengers.
At some point, the children became too hungry to wait for airplane food, and so ended up purchasing some expensive, yet mediocre, airport food from a business with no competition, and no plastic knives with which to cut a bagel.
My goals for an airport would be
Any new airport should not be accessible by road. This means that there is no need for searching automobiles approaching the airport, no need for police to ticket and tow parked automobiles at the pick-up/drop-off area, no need for a large parking garage (which cannot allow parking within 300 feet of the airport in any case due to FAA regulations), no need to design a main terminal in order to allow automobile access.
Such an airport would only be accessible for cargo and passengers by tram. One would catch the tram from a remote station in say, downtown Everett, or Bellevue, or Seattle, or Woodinville, or even Eastern Washington, and be quite certain that one would arrive at the airport on schedule. Flight information would be available on the tram to help direct passengers to the correct stop. One or more of the remote stations would likely be adjacent to one or more automobile rental companies.
The airport itself need not consist of a main terminal and long concourses with single secure passenger entry points. Instead, the airport would consist of several small, round mini-terminals connected and accessible through underground tram, with 8-12 gates for planes around the outside of each. Each mini-terminal would provide passenger check-in and baggage check, and passenger screening. Each might even have its own small baggage carousel, or baggage may be shipped to a central set of carousels. Passenger check-in and baggage check may be allowed by some of the larger airlines at the remote tram terminals, allowing even easier travel to the airport.
Since each mini-terminal only handles its own security, a breach of security only affects that area of 8-12 gates. Access to and between the mini-terminals is also very controlled, allowing easy containment of security problems. Also, since each mini-terminal is small, the distance from the tram to the gate is also small. Locally checked baggage may reduce misdirected baggage, and isolating baggage carousels may also decrease theft. Expansion of the airport would mean adding more mini-terminals, which should minimally affect the rest of the mini-terminals due to the isolation of each. The same would be true of renovation projects.
The implication of localized security is that there would be more X-ray machines, luggage scanning machines, metal detectors, and security personnel needed for such an airport. However, just the single SeaTac security breach noted above likely exceeded this cost in lost business.
The remote tram stations would allow the more immediate economic benefits of an airport to be spread out to the surrounding communities, allowing businesses to locate parking, shops, restaurants, hotels, and other services away from the airport, and possibly even more convenient to travelers than those clustered around SeaTac.
There would not be very much of a need to drop off or pick up passengers at the airport itself (although meeting at a security check point for a mini-terminal should be quite easy, as opposed to the current SeaTac recommendation), which would reduce the number people at the airport and make the remote tram stations meeting places, helping local businesses even more. Local governments may even vie for such remote stations. One could even imagine this as being the basis for an efficient and reliable transportation system, eventually.
Some of the numerous obstacles would be: the Port Authority itself, who raises money through concessions, parking, and other fees; the airlines, whose fees currently are reduced because of the money raised by the Port Authority through concessions, etc.; Communities that have a vested business interest in centralizing the airport; and private transportation companies. It seems doubtful that the passengers who actually pay for the service would be opposed to a functional airport.