Portland International Jetport | PWM

Wow that is pathetic. Horrible planning and facilities management.
 
The new airport, to management is nothing more than a "SRO people warehouse", until a plane leaves or takes off, they really do not care, or money would have been in the build budget for seating, IMO. Size does matter to them though, seating does not, unless it is for their own bottoms.
 
I see their point about the gate seating being more expensive because it has built in electrical outlets and such, but the avoidance of seating in the rest of the terminal does indeed seem to be poor planning. Here's a bench for $100 that kind of matches the new terminal, just sprinkle a few of these around for now.
 
As anyone involved with design in any way knows, sometimes after-the-fact completely obvious shortcomings become visible that were not noted (although should have been) prior to seeing the thing in existence and noting how people use and interact with it.

The same exact problem we are discussing here--seating--was a huge shortcoming (and still is) in many public plaza designs across the country. People forget that they are designing places for people.

That being said, for all the complaining on here, this is a tremendous structure, with a warm feeling created by the wooden beams, which is atypical of a larger airport, and if the only major shortcoming is seating, then I see no reason why Corey's $100 benches shouldn't be able to fix the problem. I think this addition is a huge success.
 
Patrick said:
As anyone involved with design in any way knows, sometimes after-the-fact completely obvious shortcomings become visible that were not noted (although should have been) prior to seeing the thing in existence and noting how people use and interact with it.
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But that is not the case. The e-mail response from them proves that it was their intention to not have seating from the get-go, nor do they have any sense of urgency to correct this blatant error caused by incompetent planners. There is no way that you can successfully argue against seating in a check-in area. They seem to have completely forgetten that people pick up other people (aka "arrivals") at airports and have to wait until the plane the person is coming off of actually arrives. Throw in a delay and the person picking up the passenger is supposed to stand for 4 hours? That's absurd.


Patrick said:
That being said, for all the complaining on here, this is a tremendous structure, with a warm feeling created by the wooden beams, which is atypical of a larger airport, and if the only major shortcoming is seating, then I see no reason why Corey's $100 benches shouldn't be able to fix the problem. I think this addition is a huge success.
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You're right it is an incredible structure and even with cheap furniture, the architecture can most definitely hold its own. Right now, it looks like a fancy banquet hall.
 
I haven't been in to the new terminal, but from the outside it looks REALLY nice. I was up in the area last week after not having been to Portland since last spring. The terminal is a great improvement over what was the previous iteration. A far cry from the abortion taking place on the side of the Wyndham Hotel buildings down the road. What's up with that?
 
It is an attempt to tone the buildings down a bit and rid them of their "seventies" appearance. Elvis was scheduled to stay on the 9th floor suite of the taller structure on the evening of the day he died for a concert at the Civic Center. Word has it that his advance party had all the windows totally covered in tin foil so light would not come into the suite.
 
I was in terminal C in logan last week, I am not positive, but i dont remember much seating outside of security. Although there are a couple restaurants.
 
I neglected to read the email on the previous page, so you are right, datadyne, that is not the case here. But the director did say he envisions or at least foresees seating in the future. He wanted to put in the electrical outlets, like you see with iPods hooked into them at larger airports, not just a bench. If a bench was put in place, I can see people saying "what is with Maine, people don't use cell phones or laptops there? where are the plugs?"

All in all the place is still a huge success in my opinion.
 
Flying has become a hassle in so many ways.......thanks PWM for adding to it just a little bit more.:(
 
New service between Portland and Halifax, NS via Elite Airways starts in June making the "international" in the Jetport's name a little more relevant.
 
Why did they ever call it a jetport anyway? Were they not happy with "airport".
 
It was a marketing ploy decades ago when PWM started to grow and eventually shift away from prop aircraft to actual jet service.
 
I heard the reason why it is called "Jetport" instead of Airport was not to confuse customers with Portland Oregon. Regardless it makes for a unique name for a terrific small Airport.
 
Frontier Airlines announced today they will be commencing new service from Portland to Raleigh/Durham, Denver and Orlando in July. This will now give PWM mainline service from 6 carriers which include Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, American, United and Frontier.

Passenger enplanements are expected to surpass one million by the end of the year and should make Portland the 4th busiest airport in New England after Logan, Bradley and Providence. Manchester would drop to fifth followed by Burlington at number six.
 
I can see the flight to Denver doing very well. There's lots of demand for that route. Raleigh-Durham seems like an odd choice but it's good to see some solid growth at the jetport. Whats worth noting is that Frontier doesn't fly to Logan, so this service will be pulling in people from all over Maine, NH and northern Mass.

Now the Jetport will have daily service with A319s, A320s, 737s and 717s. Not bad at all.
 
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I agree, and Manchester has seen 11 consecutive years of declining enplanemensts. I think Frontier may be profitable because they chose new markets that do not currently compete with PWM's already established routes. The only exception would be Elite Airways service to the Orlando/Sanford area which is not really a conflict.

The Jetport did install their new passenger bridge last week at Gate 2 which brings the current total to 10, not including Gate 1 A/B/C which is reserved for RJ's. Rehab of the Gate 1-6 concourse area (floors/carpeting/gate signage/restrooms/lighting) will begin later this year to make it blend in with the newer portion of the terminal.
 
Portlander said:
I agree, and Manchester has seen 11 consecutive years of declining enplanemensts.
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It looks like PWM already snubbed Manchester as the 4th busiest in New England, with 1.8 million passengers in 2017, compared to 1.63 million for MHT
 
Portlander said:
The Jetport did install their new passenger bridge last week at Gate 2 which brings the current total to 10, not including Gate 1 A/B/C which is reserved for RJ's. Rehab of the Gate 1-6 concourse area (floors/carpeting/gate signage/restrooms/lighting) will begin later this year to make it blend in with the newer portion of the terminal.
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How about a people mover in that stretch? It's a fair hike from the new gates to the exit by the escalator. Yes, I'm lazy.
 
^ A renovation project to improve the lower level prior to baggage claim will remove the current escalator and add a new one further west to shorten the route from the upper concourse. Sorry, people mover not in any future improvement budgets : )
 
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