Seattle Area Airports and Aviation News

[Arch_Angel 753]

IAF bridge and towers coming right along.

[NikolasM]

How about this location for a new airport? (I still think there is tons more we can milk out of Sea-Tac if we get creative enough.) eh, look a few posts lower for a working link (I hope).

[hmaurice]

Originally Posted by NikolasM

How about this location for a new airport? (I still think there is tons more we can milk out of Sea-Tac if we get creative enough.)Google Map of South Puget Sound Airport. It will look better in Satellite view.

The only vacant land I see are wetlands and Native American reservation land. Probably easier to use eminent domain to expand SeaTac.

[CityView Jim]

Level Burien. It'll cut down on noise complaints at the same time.

[NikolasM]

Originally Posted by hmaurice

The only vacant land I see are wetlands and Native American reservation land. Probably easier to use eminent domain to expand SeaTac.

I googled the reservation boundaries and they are all to the south of the Nisqually river. Also, based on the terrain maps it is all rather elevated and shows no streams or anything.

And I'm all for eminent domain on expanding Sea-Tac.

[cameronrex]

The mapped area sits in a valley. Large amounts of money is being spent to restore the wetlands/estuary around the mouth of the river. I could also see there being difficulties for take offs and landings as being in a relatively small valley would result in very limited flight paths.

[NikolasM]

No, the area I mapped that airport in sits above the valley. I promise. It is not in a wetland that I'm aware of.

Here, try this link. I may have not set up sharing on it properly earlier.

Google Maps link (zoom in on DuPont area left of JBLM)

[Capitol Hill]

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/...hoo&yptr=yahoo

The airport also leased space that lacked basic infrastructure to support full restaurant operations. In all cases, the businesses spent years and tens of thousands of dollars on drafting and preparing plans and bidding for airport space, according to documents obtained by The Puget Sound Business Journal

Interesting article. I swear, the incompetence at the airport...

[AKH]

Originally Posted by NikolasM

How about this location for a new airport? (I still think there is tons more we can milk out of Sea-Tac if we get creative enough.) eh, look a few posts lower for a working link (I hope).

JBLM is the immediate northern neighbor as well. All kinds of flight restrictions, conflicts with McChord airspace I would imagine (although McChord itself has been tossed around as an option). If they had built the airport out on the Enumclaw plateau on 10,000 acres in the 40's, we would have plenty of capacity. I think the airports in Olympia and Bremerton will surface as strong options, despite the challenges they present in terms of access (Bremerton) and distance from the core (Olympia).

[BoulderGrad]

There was an idea way back in the day to flatten Mercer Island and make it an airport. Can we revive that?

[annman]

If we want further FAA limitations on both Bellevue and Seattle skylines, and want to spend $200-bn on imminent domain costs.

[northendMK]

Somewhat related - Maybe one of you airport/airline guys could answer this
I've recently been wondering what the plan is with Paine Field. So the new terminal has two gates, and is limited to 24 takeoffs and landings each per day. I think that Paine is the obvious answer for a second airport, but why are we approaching it piecemeal? I guess here are my three questions:

-If they had to build such a small terminal for the initial commercial service, was it designed with expansion in mind? From my untrained eye it doesn't seem so.

-What is the likelihood of an aggressive expansion? I don't know anything about large-scale commercial aviation, but let's say they do want to expand Paine from two gates to twenty. How does ED, the FAA, Boeing, and nearby resident legal recourse all factor in?

-Is there a master plan anywhere that shows the long term plans for Paine? As someone who loosely followed its opening, it seemed like they just kinda decided to do a two-gate trial run to see if there was an appetite for Paine. If it could eventually become a major domestic airport for the region (especially with link access, maybe an SR526 spur as well), what would that look like? What is the timeframe looking like?

[NikolasM]

Well just looking at PAE on satellite view there is barely any room unless you clear out all general aviation. It is all either GA or Boeing and half finished planes. I just don't see how it is going to be the relief valve for Sea-Tac.

[mhays]

Cutting back on general aviation would be a big hurdle, but exactly 0.3% the challenge of an all new airport.

[Seasun]

Seems like only if Boeing moved operations away would Paine really be viable as a major airport. Very unlikely but possible.

[annman]

Very very unlikely, given their largest assembly site is just across the road.

[Capitol Hill]

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/...hoo&yptr=yahoo

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has launched a $156.3 million program to fix its aging airfield pavement and utilities.

Port of Seattle commissioners, who oversee the nation's fastest growing airport, recently approved $16 million in spending for the first design phase of what will be a five-year effort.

Sea-Tac's runways have all been redone since 2008 as part of close to $200 million in investments.

"Now that we’ve completed the runway rebuilds we can really go after the needs around the rest of the airfield," airport spokesman Perry Cooper said.

The pavement on some taxiways and taxi lanes were designed for a 20-year life — but some are now 50 years old. The average age of the taxiways and taxi lanes is 43.

I believe included in this is replacing some taxiways off of runways as high speed exits off of runways, which should help with the queues of planes departing. Of course, our delays will still probably increase due to traffic increases, but they’d be much worst without these fixes.

[JasonB52]

One airport I always thought had some potential to be a mid-sized regional airport is Tacoma Narrows Airport. The runway is currently 5,000' x 100', and it looks like there is some room on the north side to extend it another 3,500 feet or so. I am sure you would need to rework the taxiways too, but that doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility based on the space available.

There is some development to the west of the airport, but it isn't particularly dense development in the grand scheme of things. I bet you could stick a nice terminal on the west side of the current runway and turn Stone Drive into a larger access road that connects to Highway 16. Then you use what little space is available on the east side of the runway for support facilities.

The simple fact that much of the flight path for this airport is over Puget Sound seems nice. No blocking potential supertalls. (Unless Gig Harbor decides to go Dubai on us!)

[Pezzo]

As of March 29, 2020 ANA flights from Seattle to Tokyo will go to Haneda.

[Capitol Hill]

And Delta starts up in March I believe. This will help traffic to Tokyo, but ANA has a more robust international schedule at NRT than HND. The HND flight will help for Japanese connections. This distance NRT is from Ginza in Tokyo is the equivalent of Lacey to the downtown Macy’s store for comparison (44 miles).