I appears American will resume Lansing-Washington Reagan airport flights, likely this summer. The USDOT approved a slot exception at Reagan, allowing 1 daily round trip flight.
This has been done before -- most recently with Sun Country on Boeing 737s. About 10 years ago, Independence Air, an then Northwest offered daily flights to DC.
Delta also put forth a proposal (but only after American submitted theirs).
The nice thing with American flying the route 1) regional jets - better size for the LAN-DC market 2) DCA is a small American hub, so it will provide connecting flights (unlike prior Sun Country or Northwest/Delta service)
American also plans to offer 3 daily flights to Chicago -- would compete with United already serving the route. Hopefully this would lead to United stepping up their game and offering more daily Chicago flights also.
Lansing airport has it up and down moments in terms of air service and has struggled in recent years to maintain flights outside of the Detroit/Chicago/Minneapolis offerings.
Lansing's airport is going to receive a large grant from the infrastructure funds recently made available. I hope they spend some of that money on the terminal building, it seems dark and old fashion in that building with the low ceilings and windows that face the covered drives it can also feel cold. Some of the car dealerships in Lansing have nicer buildings that could be mistaken for bright modern airport terminals!
Yeah, our airport is pretty embarrassing even for a city of our size. Unfortunately that grant is only for $2 million and that won't be enough to do anything of consequence, a new terminal would almost certainly be well over $100 million. There were plans in the airport's master plan to build a new terminal off Dewitt Rd on the east side of the airport property, I don't think there's been any serious discussion of actually doing a new terminal though. IMO the airport will never see much growth in passenger traffic until there is a new terminal, I do hope to see it happen sooner rather than later.
Yeah, most likely this funding we landed - pun intended - will go towards tarmac or runway repair.
BTW, got around to actually looking back through the masterplan, and was kind of shocked to see them estimating a terminal replacement would cost $213.8 million. And expansion is not exactly the same, but Ford International in GR is doing an fancy expansion of its terminal - which is the size of the existing Lansing terminal - at a cost of "only" $90 million. I think we should be shooting for something WELL under $200 million. Like, the similarly-sized but much more heavily used Flint Bishop has a nice terminal which I can't imagine cost anywhere near that even in today's dollars. A new terminal doesn't need to be the Taj Mahal; it just needs more modern amenities, layout and architecture. Should add that the FAA often pays something like 90% of the costs of certain projects, but land those kind of dollars is super competitive and means we'd still have to come up with millions of our own dollars for the match.
Some of the stuff on the master plan map above has been completed since the master plan was published, like the runway expansion (10R/28L) and the cargo facilities area expansion.
I had forgotten about how extensive their plans for expansion are, they plan on going way past State Rd. It's kind of disappointing to see how little of this plan has been realized as our airport falls further and further behind other cities in the region. I'm not surprised at the $200 million+ price tag on the new terminal, even that may be pretty conservative given inflation and what not. After all, the new terminal will include new roads, parking lots/garages, possibly a new control tower, the diagonal runway extension, taxiways, fueling and other plane infrastructure all before you get to the actual terminal building. I wonder if they're even actively working towards this master plan in any way right now?
No, the $200 mil isn't for the whole plan, just for the terminal building. That's ridiculous, quite frankly; they need to be planning for something considerably less than that.
The things I listed, besides maybe the diagonal runway extension, are directly related to and required for the new terminal, I thinks it's safe to say those costs are considered in their projected costs for that project. I'll continue to argue that $200m is nothing for an airport terminal, especially a ground up one that requires entirely new parking, road access, fueling and everything. Major new terminals are measured in the billions and tens of billions of dollars, that's the reality of the costs involved. One of the most recent projects I see is a new terminal at Kansas City, at 39 gates it's probably twice as large as what we'd need in Lansing. It's price tag is $1.5 billion.
This is from last last month, but the airport is planning to expand its cargo apron by 400,000 sq ft to be able to increase its cargo capacity for future cargo traffic:
This will expand the current apron by 60%. They plan to start on this next summer. This will allow for more logisitics companies to be attracted to the airport; there are currently 3 cargo companies operating out of LAN. They currently account for about 14% of the airport's annual revenue. The airport is also working on additional development, which could include a 160,000 sq ft speculative building for either manufacturing, logistics, or warehousing, the extension of utilities to 37 acres at the airport for other businesses, etc.
It's nice to see that the airport is not going to allow the pandemic to derails its plans.
I read in the LSJ.com that Lansing will getting a new airline with low fares to Orlando, and with more flights possible in the future. It is a new airline called Avelo Airlines. It was noted that hundreds of passengers from Lansing have Orlando as their destination via one or two stops. It sounds like a good plan.
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This has been done before -- most recently with Sun Country on Boeing 737s. About 10 years ago, Independence Air, an then Northwest offered daily flights to DC.
Delta also put forth a proposal (but only after American submitted theirs).
The nice thing with American flying the route 1) regional jets - better size for the LAN-DC market 2) DCA is a small American hub, so it will provide connecting flights (unlike prior Sun Country or Northwest/Delta service)
American also plans to offer 3 daily flights to Chicago -- would compete with United already serving the route. Hopefully this would lead to United stepping up their game and offering more daily Chicago flights also.
Lansing airport has it up and down moments in terms of air service and has struggled in recent years to maintain flights outside of the Detroit/Chicago/Minneapolis offerings.
BTW, got around to actually looking back through the masterplan, and was kind of shocked to see them estimating a terminal replacement would cost $213.8 million. And expansion is not exactly the same, but Ford International in GR is doing an fancy expansion of its terminal - which is the size of the existing Lansing terminal - at a cost of "only" $90 million. I think we should be shooting for something WELL under $200 million. Like, the similarly-sized but much more heavily used Flint Bishop has a nice terminal which I can't imagine cost anywhere near that even in today's dollars. A new terminal doesn't need to be the Taj Mahal; it just needs more modern amenities, layout and architecture. Should add that the FAA often pays something like 90% of the costs of certain projects, but land those kind of dollars is super competitive and means we'd still have to come up with millions of our own dollars for the match.
Some of the stuff on the master plan map above has been completed since the master plan was published, like the runway expansion (10R/28L) and the cargo facilities area expansion.
https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2022/06/30/capital-region-international-airport-expansion-cargo-shipping-capacity-supply-chain-uncertainty/7747976001/?utm_source=lansingstatejournal-DailyBriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_briefing&utm_term=list_article_thumb&utm_content=PLSJ-1051SJ-E-NLETTER65
This will expand the current apron by 60%. They plan to start on this next summer. This will allow for more logisitics companies to be attracted to the airport; there are currently 3 cargo companies operating out of LAN. They currently account for about 14% of the airport's annual revenue. The airport is also working on additional development, which could include a 160,000 sq ft speculative building for either manufacturing, logistics, or warehousing, the extension of utilities to 37 acres at the airport for other businesses, etc.
It's nice to see that the airport is not going to allow the pandemic to derails its plans.