NOTEBOOK: Airport 101
PERRY BEEMAN Sep 20, 2018 | 4:05 pm
2 min read time
473 wordsBusiness Record Insider, The Insider NotebookKevin Foley, Des Moines International Airport’s general manager and executive director, briefed reporters last week on basic airport operations.
The tour included a behind-the-scenes look at a cramped but reworked baggage screening area that would greatly expand if the planned new terminal is built.
We also stopped along the C gates (after passing through security — and Foley happened to be the last to make it through, tee hee). Here, we looked at the new set of restaurants that are greatly outpacing their predecessors, though not meeting budget, yet.
Down the way, Foley noted that seating is at a premium at flight gates, in part because Americans love to claim a lot of space, in part by setting their bags in front of the empty seat next to them.
During a PowerPoint presentation, Foley shared a number of interesting tidbits.
— After seeing the sharp growth at Des Moines International following the last recession, Foley worries about the boom that could follow the next recession — which should hit well before the new terminal is ready. That will test that current airport’s space, he said. The airport could hit 2.75 million passengers this year, and 3 million — the level where the current terminal will be significantly overcrowded — by 2020, seven years earlier than expected. The new terminal wouldn’t be ready for nearly a decade after that.
— The airport is losing service to Newark, N.J., but gaining another flight to LaGuardia in New York. Still on the wish list for nonstops: Los Angeles (year-round) and San Jose or Oakland, Calif.
— Foley runs the airport, where airlines are tenants, but he has no direct control on what air service is offered. “I get credit or blame for a whole bunch of things I have no control over,” Foley explains. “I can’t tell an airline what or where to fly. I do court them.”
— The change in airport management to an authority board in 2011 and a staff of airline professionals attuned to the air industry and not engineering led to the record growth at the airport and much more solid finances, Foley said. Before the airport was tied in with the city’s budget. Now it is independent. “That is the one thing that has made all the difference,” Foley said. “The shackles have been removed.”
— The airport draws 7,000 people a day, most of them for departures between 4 and 7 a.m. More than two-thirds of all check-ins are by Iowans. The airport has 40 to 50 roundtrip passenger flights a day.
— The airport is looking into a new ways to track where customers go to fly, which uses Google as a tool. As it stands, the biggest loss of business for Des Moines is the 3 percent of customers who go to Minneapolis, primarily for international flights.