Logan Airport Flights and Airlines Discussion

atlantaden said:
2022, six years till Terminal E catches up with passenger load? Massport got caught with it's pants down on this one; Terminal E expansion should have been in the works six years ago when the push by Massport to bring more foreign carriers to Logan was happening. Massport seems so timid when ever expansion is needed and it always seems to be playing catch-up.
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They got caught with their pants down because they didn't invest a billion dollars on faith that their marketing efforts would not only succeed, but would be such a runaway success that an airline from Norway, operating from Ireland, would like to use Logan as a transfer hub to get people from Britain to the Caribbean?

If they'd tried, we either would have had a good chance of ending up with a Mirabel-style white elephant or they would have built a cheap, ugly building to account for the risk. I prefer it this way. Hopefully, they can plan now with more information so that we end up with an attractive and appropriate facility.
 
Equilibria said:
They got caught with their pants down because they didn't invest a billion dollars on faith that their marketing efforts would not only succeed, but would be such a runaway success that an airline from Norway, operating from Ireland, would like to use Logan as a transfer hub to get people from Britain to the Caribbean?

If they'd tried, we either would have had a good chance of ending up with a Mirabel-style white elephant or they would have built a cheap, ugly building to account for the risk. I prefer it this way. Hopefully, they can plan now with more information so that we end up with an attractive and appropriate facility.
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Equilib -- Unfortunately Masport still has to continue the fiction that Logan is not growing to one audience [Revere, East Boston and Winthrop, etc.] -- and -- simultaneously we're growing like gang-busters to their other audiences [Beijing, Delhi, Riad, Seoul, Brasiilia, etc.]

The one cussion for Logan to work with these days when dealing with the Regulatory Bureaucracy is that flight ops [dominated by props] were so huge in the immediate pre-2001. As a result as long as they can claim that even though passenger volume continues to increase the ops are still way less than the record level
 
Equilibria said:
They got caught with their pants down because they didn't invest a billion dollars on faith that their marketing efforts would not only succeed, but would be such a runaway success that an airline from Norway, operating from Ireland, would like to use Logan as a transfer hub to get people from Britain to the Caribbean?

If they'd tried, we either would have had a good chance of ending up with a Mirabel-style white elephant or they would have built a cheap, ugly building to account for the risk. I prefer it this way. Hopefully, they can plan now with more information so that we end up with an attractive and appropriate facility.
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+1
 
whighlander said:
Equilib -- Unfortunately Masport still has to continue the fiction that Logan is not growing to one audience [Revere, East Boston and Winthrop, etc.] -- and -- simultaneously we're growing like gang-busters to their other audiences [Beijing, Delhi, Riad, Seoul, Brasiilia, etc.]

The one cussion for Logan to work with these days when dealing with the Regulatory Bureaucracy is that flight ops [dominated by props] were so huge in the immediate pre-2001. As a result as long as they can claim that even though passenger volume continues to increase the ops are still way less than the record level
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Did traffic really drop that dramatically after 9/11? Maybe I'm too young to know, but what was the traffic like before then?
 
Mongo said:
Did traffic really drop that dramatically after 9/11? Maybe I'm too young to know, but what was the traffic like before then?
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Air traffic dropped off so much after 9/11 that you had the spate of airline bankruptcies before things started to turn back around a couple years later. Definite nationwide cratering that hurt the industry real bad. Didn't help that the U.S. was in a recession when 9/11 happened.

Can't speak to 90's levels because Logan was torn the hell up for years of reconstruction and roadway work spurred on by the Big Dig and opening of the Ted. It was definitely a lot more difficult to get to during those "please pardon our appearance" years, so the late-90's boom economy may have been blunted somewhat by the effects of those unrelated external forces. In general, though, Boston's grown so much in the last dozen years that now/today is pretty much busiest it's ever been.
 
Mongo said:
Did traffic really drop that dramatically after 9/11? Maybe I'm too young to know, but what was the traffic like before then?
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Logan had a whole "lost decade" in the naughts. See the traffic table 1-8 in this 2011 report(PDF page 25 of 347).

Average annual growth in domestic was 0.7% and international "growth" was NEGATIVE 1.2%

The whole tech bubble economy of the late 1990s and the first practical regional jets were very good to Boston (Fly BEX jets to everywhere!). As the tech bubble ended, things were already coming apart for air travel (TWA went bankrupt and was aquired by AA in APRIL 2001)

It wasn't just 9/11 it was the Iraq War (spike in oil prices) and business travel recession that lasted 2001 - 2003 and then the whole financial crisis that killed traffic again 2007 - 2010.

So if you were a facilities planner in 2011, you're looking at 3 huge projects that didn't pay off:
- I-90 through Ted Williams (Opened 2003)
- Runway 14/32 (opened 2006)
- Logan Airport Modernization (completed 2006)

And the 787 was only certified in August 2011.

Terminal E was so empty that its only salvation was to turn it over to AirTran and then still had space for Southwest to start.

There was really nothing in the data in 2011 that said "gotta be ready for that 2015 boom in international"
 
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Equilibria said:
They got caught with their pants down because they didn't invest a billion dollars on faith that their marketing efforts would not only succeed, but would be such a runaway success that an airline from Norway, operating from Ireland, would like to use Logan as a transfer hub to get people from Britain to the Caribbean?

If they'd tried, we either would have had a good chance of ending up with a Mirabel-style white elephant or they would have built a cheap, ugly building to account for the risk. I prefer it this way. Hopefully, they can plan now with more information so that we end up with an attractive and appropriate facility.
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I hear what you're saying but Terminal E was built back in 1974 with no gates added since that time, 40 freaking years later. You don't invite hundreds of additional guests to your home for your annual holiday party if you don't have the space/resources to accommodate them. It's all about math, Massport can easily figure that additional numbers of arriving passengers will take up so much space, that customs can handle only so many people per hour, etc, it's called forecasting. I still say poor planning on Massport's part and now they're playing catch-up. I also will agree with Whighlander, Massport walks on eggshells due to it's relationship with East Boston and puts off, as long as it can, expansion plans due to a perceived outcry of protests from the neighbors.
 
atlantaden said:
It's all about math, Massport can easily figure that additional numbers of arriving passengers will take up so much space, that customs can handle only so many people per hour, etc, it's called forecasting.
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See my post above. All the math in 2011 was that international travel had fallen since 2001, and that because we were not an international hub there was no reason to expect it to return. In fact, the story in Europe was all about killing/merging the hopeless flag carriers like TAP and Alitalia and SwissAir (all of which have had BOS international flights to justify their lame hubs) into AF/KL, LH, or BA and eliminating flights from minor hubs.

A whole bunch of things came together very fast: JetBlue's connecting business, the 787 delivery problem was solved, an international recovery, and falling/stable oil prices.

Even looking at the data in 2012/13/14, you'd have seen jetfuel prices that would be putting a damper on expansion.

So only very recently is it "obvious" that international is worth building stuff for. The international terminal was so empty that they put Southwest in it.

Also, Logan was generally over-gated: it had plenty of gate space from the small jet / regional jet era (and when there were still 6 or 7 majors instead of 3) and was accommodating growth through bigger planes and bigger seating areas. (see page 26 / Chart 1-3 in the 2011 doc)
 
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atlantaden said:
I hear what you're saying but Terminal E was built back in 1974 with no gates added since that time, 40 freaking years later. You don't invite hundreds of additional guests to your home for your annual holiday party if you don't have the space/resources to accommodate them. It's all about math, Massport can easily figure that additional numbers of arriving passengers will take up so much space, that customs can handle only so many people per hour, etc, it's called forecasting. I still say poor planning on Massport's part and now they're playing catch-up. I also will agree with Whighlander, Massport walks on eggshells due to it's relationship with East Boston and puts off, as long as it can, expansion plans due to a perceived outcry of protests from the neighbors.
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Atlantaden -- Term E when it opwned in 1974 had the 2nd largest International Gateway in one building -- it was essentially rebuilt in 1997 except for the Customs Area with the provision for 3 additional gates [never built] in expectation of 45 Million total passengers at Logan circa 2020

The new Term E International Gateway was built in the 2003-2007 time frame
 
Outside of NYC, I would imagine Boston would be UA's most important trans-con market. I am wondering to how they may respond? I believe they run San Francisco-Boston 6 daily year round and added a 7th daily for May through September. They have the frequency over JetBlue, but now they're going to lose the product battle.
 
I saw a Massport tweet the other day that the pre-security inside connector between A and B is now open. I believe the C to E connector will be post-security, so is there a way to go between C and E pre-security without ever being 'outside'?
 
stellarfun said:
I saw a Massport tweet the other day that the pre-security inside connector between A and B is now open.
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I worked on it. =D

The new B garage elevators are not yet active though, but the connector has its TCO and is open to the public. The walls are still unfinished too. There will be some cool materials going up on them.
 
Equilibria said:
AA consolidation was obviously coming, but I don't think I had seen it confirmed before...

https://www.massport.com/business-w...-massport/capital-programs/detail/?proj=L1375
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From reading the RFQ, it looks as if either United has a net loss of three of its new gates, or picks up three of AA's gates in Pier A, to replace B20, B21, B22. AA, assuming it gets B1, B2, B3, would have one less gate than now.

Presently.

B1, B2, B3 Not AA (PenAir, Air Canada, Spirit)
B4-B19 (17 gates includes B9A-9B) AA
B20-29 (10 gates) United
B30-36 (7 gates) AA
B 37-38 (orphan gates) Virgin America

The RFQ work is to cover B1 through B-22.
 
I saw a Massport tweet the other day that the pre-security inside connector between A and B is now open. I believe the C to E connector will be post-security, so is there a way to go between C and E pre-security without ever being 'outside'?

datadyne007 said:
I worked on it. =D

The new B garage elevators are not yet active though, but the connector has its TCO and is open to the public. The walls are still unfinished too. There will be some cool materials going up on them.
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Forgive me but I haven't a clue as to if Stellarfun's original question about walking from C to E without having to go outside has been answered. Data, do you mean you have to go into the parking garage and walk through a newly constructed connector (TCO) to an existing walkway in the garage to get to Terminal E?
 
atlantaden said:
I saw a Massport tweet the other day that the pre-security inside connector between A and B is now open. I believe the C to E connector will be post-security, so is there a way to go between C and E pre-security without ever being 'outside'?



Forgive me but I haven't a clue as to if Stellarfun's original question about walking from C to E without having to go outside has been answered. Data, do you mean you have to go into the parking garage and walk through a newly constructed connector (TCO) to an existing walkway in the garage to get to Terminal E?
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No that was not what I said at all. Notice I only quoted the A-B connector piece. It has nothing to do with C-E connections. Also, TCO means Temporary Certificate of Occupancy. Sry for the alphabet soup.
 
^^^^^^^^^

God, you'd think after teaching 6th grade for 30 years I'd learn to heed the advice that I gave to the kids a thousand times which is..."please, read things more carefully". I'm out of it! Thanks Data! Sorry for the confusion.
 
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