A comment posted this week reminded me of a question that I’ve been meaning to ask:

I don’t understand why both Delta and Southwest, which together handle about 70% of KCI’s passenger traffic, are both crammed into Terminal B. If Delta moved to terminal C, Southwest could have the entire B terminal to itself. That would also free up space at the terminal B parking garage, which is full at peak times.

DLNWWhen Delta and Northwest merged in 2008, Delta was in its current location at the end of Terminal B and Northwest was over in Terminal C. Meanwhile, Southwest was expanding toward Delta from the other end of Terminal B. So why was the decision made to move Northwest over to the already busiest Terminal B instead of moving Delta over to the lightly used Terminal C?

Today, two of the more common reasons offered to justify the new single-terminal proposal are:

  1. It is hard to find short-term parking at Terminal B during the week.
  2. Southwest is our dominant carrier, is out of room and cannot expand in the current Terminal.

Well gee, whose fault is that?!?

So again I ask, why was the decision made (and who made it) to bring Northwest over to Terminal B instead of moving Delta over to Terminal C? I’m not necessarily suggesting that the move was intentionally made to create frustrated passengers anxious to build a new airport. Perhaps it was a cheaper short-term move, but there is no way that competent authorities could not have predicted the long-term issues that would result from their decision and so the decision to create the parking and crowding issues was an intentional one.

Perhaps we can correct that mistake now and maybe save a billion dollars in the process? Additionally, with the merger of United and Continental and the pending merger of American and US Airways, gate and security allocation issues are about to become much simpler.

 

 

 

 

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