As Demand Grows, RDU will Present Plan to Add Gates to Terminal 1 in April

Raleigh-Durham International Airport is working on plans to expand Terminal 1, and planners expect to present a proposal to the airport’s governing board in April.

The airport is considering adding as many as 15 gates to the terminal to keep up with passenger growth, but the exact number is not settled yet, said Bill Sandifer, RDU’s chief operating officer. If the Airport Authority approves the concept in April, it would take at least two years for designs and permits and another three years of construction before the new gates are open, Sandifer said.

RDU is considering options of adding seven, 12 or 15 gates to Terminal 1, which will have nine later this spring. The lower two numbers could be built without significant changes to the road and drop-off zone in front of the terminal and would cost as much as $500 million.

“We need to expand Terminal 1,” Sandifer said. ”The only question is how many gates.”

It’s not clear which airlines would leave Terminal 2, the airport’s main terminal with 36 gates, to occupy the new slots in Terminal 1. Sandifer said airport staff will meet with airlines in coming months to talk about the airport’s expansion plans and how they might fit in.

Two airlines, Allegiant and Spirit, will move to Terminal 1 in April when RDU reopens four gates that were mothballed after Terminal 2 opened in 2008. Frontier Airlines is expected to follow at a later date. The reopened gates, added to the five used by Southwest Airlines, would bring the total number of gates in Terminal 1 to nine.

Growth outpaces predictions

A development plan for the airport approved four years ago, known as Vision 2040, envisions expansion to begin in Terminal 2 on the west side of the airport. Since then, passenger growth has far outstripped expectations; more than 14.2 million travelers passed through RDU last year, a number the airport didn’t expect to reach until 2031 under Vision 2040.

To make room for added gates in Terminal 2, RDU must build a new runway west of the current one, which would then be converted into a taxiway. It will take until at least 2025 for that runway to open, Sandifer said, and building additional gates would take at least another three years.

“So we’re nine years out, and we’re still growing,” he said.

Adding gates to Terminal 1 has already drawn opposition from The Umstead Coalition, a collection of nonprofits that works to promote and protect William B. Umstead State Park, which borders RDU to the east. The coalition’s leader, Jean Spooner, sent a letter to RDU Airport Authority members Friday urging them not to expand Terminal 1.

“These actions, if approved, would SUBSTANTIALLY increase air traffic impacts to William B. Umstead State Park,” Spooner wrote. “The result would be substantial negative impacts to Umstead State Park.”

Spooner said RDU should follow the recommendations of a task force formed by the Regional Transportation Alliance, a business group, that suggested the airport consider creating a new third terminal, north of Terminal 2, on the west side of the airport, “away from Umstead State Park.”

Sandifer told members of the Airport Authority on Monday that a new terminal would likely cost $1 billion. He added that if the airport wanted to build a new terminal that the location suggested by the task force might not be the best place for it.

RDU to expand security checkpoint

The Airport Authority approved a contract to build two more security lanes in Terminal 2, which would bring the total there to 14 by late summer. They will go into a space that until recently was occupied by the Panopolis sandwich shop and some offices used by the Transportation Security Administration.

RDU also opened two new lanes last May, bringing the total to 12, to try to relieve long lines of passengers waiting to be screened by the TSA. Those lines can snake around the ticketing hall of Terminal 2 before 8 a.m., when about a fourth of all scheduled departures from RDU take off.

The security lanes that opened last year were built in unused space behind a wall adjacent to the checkpoint and cost about $2.5 million. Adding two new lanes next to those means reconfiguring behind-the-scenes office space in Terminal 2 to make up for the lost TSA offices, so the work is expected to cost closer to $6 million.

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