Billion-dollar overhaul of Pittsburgh International airport on pause amid pandemic

A $1 billion-plus overhaul of Pittsburgh International Airport is indefinitely on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, Allegheny County’s aviation chief said Monday.

But the project remains necessary for the airport’s future, Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis said. Her assessment was echoed by national aviation experts.

The airport is “postponing any construction until it makes sense,” Cassotis said.

Plans for the new landside terminal were announced in 2019. Three months ago, officials said travelers should expect to see signs of the project.

The coronavirus changed those plans. A national economic shutdown because of the covid-19 pandemic means traffic at the airport is down 95%, Cassotis said.

The economic toll on the airline industry “is very painful,” said Bijan Vasigh, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. “The damage could get worse and worse and worse. We have not seen the extent of the economic losses.”

Nationwide passenger traffic is averaging 23 passengers per domestic flight. Airlines are losing $350 million to $400 million per day as expenses such as payroll, rent and aircraft maintenance far exceed the money they are bringing in, according to a report in The New York Times.

Vasigh likened the pandemic’s hit to the fears wrought by 9/11 combined with the economic meltdown of the 2008 recession.

“This is one of the worst times for aviation. No one could have imagined this,” Vasigh said.

The pause in construction of the new terminal at the Findlay Township airport will give officials a chance to consider how the airport should be designed to meet social distancing guidelines and to assuage fears people may have about traveling, Cassotis said.

“We look at this as an opportunity to incorporate what airports and air travel specifically can look like in a post-pandemic world,” she said.

Plexiglas at ticket counters, floor markings to encourage people to keep six feet from each other and more-visible cleaning efforts that include use of ultraviolet light to kill pathogens are just some of the things the airport is looking at, she said.

Airport officials are forming a public health advisory committee to study those issues and make recommendations that will be incorporated into the design of the new terminal, she said.

“We want to make sure our design makes sense,” Cassotis said.

She wouldn’t speculate about how long the project will be delayed.

The revamped terminal was expected to open in 2023. Bids for the project were expected to be let out by the end of the year. The new design eliminates the current landside terminal and constructs a new one alongside the airside terminal, reducing the number of gates.

The Allegheny County Airport Authority remains in negotiations for new agreements with the airlines that also are indefinitely on hold.

Airlines “have bigger things to worry about” than those negotiations at this point in the pandemic, Cassotis said.

But investing more than $1 billion to transform the airport, built in 1992 to be a hub for US Airways, still makes the best sense for the future, she said.

“The whole reason we started this project was to rightsize and modernize the terminal and to lower our costs,” Cassotis said. “We’re going to have even fewer passengers, so there’s even more of a reason to do it.”

Before the pandemic hit, the airport expected to serve more than 10 million travelers this year. Now, that number is going to be fewer, and Cassotis expects the trend to continue through 2021.

At its peak as a hub for US Airways, the airport boasted 32 million passengers each year, she said.

The airport is the “caboose” on the train that is the worldwide economy, according to Mike Boyd, president of Boyd Group International, a Colorado-based aviation consulting firm.

A lot depends on when people are allowed and/or willing to leave their “caves” because of the pandemic and resume business as usual, Boyd said.

He minimized the long-term impacts of the pandemic on air travel and said the industry could rebound quickly when the economy reopens.

The pandemic has changed the way people do business, however, as companies are seeing that work can be done remotely instead of in face-to-face meetings. While some companies were moving that way, the pandemic has hastened the trend, Boyd said.

The economic hit companies are taking also caused travel budgets to be slashed, Vasigh said.

Regardless, the new terminal is something that makes sense in Pittsburgh, Boyd and Vasigh said.

“It would be very ill-advised if they didn’t continue with that,” Boyd said. “It’s not just some frivolous pie-in-the-sky consultant report. They need it.”