Rethinking Airport Design

Ron Steinert is the vice president/director of airport projects for Gensler, an architectural firm specializing in airport facilities design. He has some 25 years of experience in the design of airport terminal facilities. He has taught airport facilities planning and design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and is past president of the Airport Consultants Council.

In 1996, airport architect Ron Steinert, then the outgoing chair of the Airport Consultants Council, told AIRPORT BUSINESS that changes in security requirements would make 90 percent of U.S. airports obsolete. His comments seem prescient in hindsight. Steinert recently shared his thoughts on how airports are reacting to the terrorist threat, the future of design, and the need for clearer direction from FAA.

Steinert, 57, is a vice president with Santa Monica, CA-based Gensler and oversees the firm’s airport practice, including four regional terminal design offices in the U.S.
Following is an edited transcript of his recent interview.
AIRPORT BUSINESS: How have airports reacted to the events of September 11 in terms of temporary and permanent design considerations to reduce the threat of terrorism at their facilities?
Steinert: Impacts we’ve been seeing across the firm is that there’s been no consistent response from the airports that we work with, in terms of putting projects on hold or going full speed ahead. There’s been an uneven response, depending on the airport.
One of the most interesting things is that we’re all re-looking at what we’ve been designing depending upon where we are in the process. We’re reconsidering the extra demands that these new security measures are having on existing facilities and making sure that we accommodate additional areas; for example, determining the number of security checkpoints and the amount of queue space required.
So, what’s happening is that terminal buildings are starting to get larger in areas where about two months ago they were getting smaller, ala the ticket counter area where we were going to go with all these machines and not need ticket counters and would have self check-in for luggage. We were going to save all kinds of area, but in fact we need to add more counters, add more space, and investigate the idea if there’s no curbside check-in.
AB: Considering that it’s a changing environment, what are you telling airports?
Steinert: I personally think and what we’re recommending is that you’ve got to assume it’s never going back to the way it was. I would be surprised if we’re not at this level indefinitely, if not forever.
Some of our existing airports are saying, ’Let’s stop work on the new facility and help us fix what we’ve got, because we can’t tolerate what we have now: lines that fill up the entire ticketing hall and go outside. We can’t do that to our passengers.’
So, at some places we’re looking at how to put in a new ticketing hall and security check capacity in the short term until, say, a newly designed facility can be brought on board.
AB: It would seem that airports are scrambling at this point.
Steinert: It’s knee-jerk; and the tendency is to Band-Aid it to death because people need it now. Well, if you take two days longer you might come up with a better solution. We’re trying to tell our clients to be careful on what you do; it may actually hurt rather than help you.
AB: Perhaps an obvious question is related to the impact on retail, particularly related to locating it pre- or post-security.
Steinert: I’ve seen several studies recently that have indicated that airside concessions are impacted by meeters and greeters by only about 4 percent. I could see that on certain airports; certainly O&D airports that cater to the business traveler. The only thing that’s affecting that type of airport is the number of passengers.
Certain airport configurations do give you some flexibility for rearranging security checkpoints.
I don’t think there’s enough evidence to beef up the landside (retail).
We’re looking at a number of different security scenarios that might mitigate where the concessions are anyway. It’s conceivable that we might be required to go to 100 percent bag screening sooner rather than later. One of the ways to do that is to create a sterile terminal; in other words, anyone that enters the terminal must go through a CTX machine before they’re allowed to go anywhere else in the terminal. It’s more of the European response, and personally that’s where I think we’re going to go.
AB: Regarding 100 percent bag screening, how close are we to that?
Steinert: There’s mixed directions on what is acceptable because FAA is not definitive on what their requirements are. You want the passenger screened with the bag at some point. Most airports don’t have the configuration or the room to allow that to happen. Or, the weight that the CTX machine puts on a structure is so much it can’t be held up.
AB: If memory serves, FAA has been saying for some time that it’s going to take ten years for us to get to 100 percent screening. However, the ten-year timeframe never seems to get any shorter. It would seem that it will only take one incident and we’ll have it implemented overnight.
Steinert: I agree with you 100 percent. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already, but it hasn’t because the FAA was supposed to provide for this, buy a bunch of CTX machines, and that hasn’t happened. The amount of contribution that the FAA will now make into screening will become very clear once Congress decides whether it’s going to be a federal job or airline job. If it’s federal, I would suggest that 100 percent baggage screening is right behind it. If it’s an airline situation, the ten years is probably as good as any number because the airlines are going to fight the added expense.
AB: When we interviewed you in 1996, you felt security was going to have a major impact on terminal design. At that time, you also said that parking would have to be rethought and moved further away.
Steinert: When we had Desert Storm, it became a consensus of a lot of us who do this for a living that this was the precursor for future events, and we needed to begin designing for it. Probably the best thing we’ve been able to do in a lot of our new terminals is to deal with the concession issue, to relocate security points.
The parking issue is one that’s probably the most difficult to accommodate or to even understand how to fix. Some 99.9 percent of the airports do not have the luxury of land to put the parking 300 feet away from the terminal. It’s contrary to maximum passenger convenience.
The issue is, what are we really trying to protect against and how do we protect? Everyone is thinking, ’I don’t want a car, a van, or SUV loaded with explosives to park in my garage and leave a bomb.’
At Midway (Airport), for example, their goal was to contain the blast with a three-foot concrete wall. But containing the blast is a harder thing to do — how big of a blast?
One of the new thoughts is to build a blast deflector. For example, engine run-up cells don’t try to contain the jet blast but to disperse and deflect it. The same thing can be done with a bomb blast; you allow the blast to exit the garage by closing it in and then deflecting it upward to the sky to dissipate the blast. It would be a more cost-effective way of doing it.
AB: While at Denver recently, a person made the observation that the new terminal had been built with glass that was designed to be blast-proof. Is that common?
Steinert: It’s not common.
Before, the threat was not that a guy is going to blow it up himself and commit suicide. But if that’s the case, containing the bomb in a garage is probably the last thing the guy is going to do. He’s going to drive up right next to the building or walk in with it. So, parking might be minor in how you’re going to protect the terminal. Are we going to eliminate glass on the front of the building?
Look at Florida, for example, where they have hurricanes. After Andrew, they passed a lot of building codes that now require glass on all public buildings to withstand a 4x4 shot out of a cannon at 20 feet and withstand three repetitions without penetration. The new glasses that have been developed to do that have restrictions in the size of the pane and how it’s held in the frame. I would think you will probably be able to use a similar type of glass in smaller panes and a frame that’s more steel-reinforced that could in fact respond appropriately to a bomb blast, or to respond favorably to someone trying to drive through the front window.
There are things that need to be studied to protect the face of the terminal, and don’t worry about the damn parking garage. That’s where I think it ought to go.
AB: Are you getting a lot of calls from airport managers asking what they can do with that extra 300 feet of space that once was used for parking?
Steinert: What we’re getting calls on is, help me find a way to get those cars back in that 300 feet. Inspection by popping the trunk is one way to deal with it, but it’s expensive. You can probably build a lot of blast deflection for the same price.
It’s a problem that can’t be solved until FAA or somebody actually defines the threat and defines the criteria that we need to respond to.
AB: Do you think that clearer direction is forthcoming from FAA?
Steinert: FAA put out new standards for blast analysis and mitigation models of how to protect. It’s a chart that says, for a compact sedan the maximum explosive is 500 pounds in the trunk, and the lethal blast range is 100 feet and the minimum evacuation distance is 1,500 feet, and so on. It goes from a compact sedan to a semi-trailer.
If you look at a full-size sedan, the maximum explosive capacity is 1,000 pounds and the lethal air blast range is 125 feet. That’s not 300 feet. So, if I only allow full-size sedans in my garage, why can’t I have 125 feet?
There’s the issue, right there. FAA has to say, this way for this reason; or, if you restrict your garage to only full-size sedans you can be 125 feet. It would be something that most airports could accommodate.
AB: Reports out of Washington say that the industry will get $3 billion for the Airport Improvement Pro-gram, and may get an additional $2 billion to help pay for these new costs. Any thoughts on how this money should be spent?
Steinert: The issue is not that they need the money, but we need some kind of singular focus on how we should do it, so that we don’t have ADOs in different regions telling us what they think is the right way to do it, which is what we have now.