MSY North terminal question

The metric you use "33 gates are occupied throughout the year", what does that mean?

The Condor flight is a weekly flight right? Seems easy enough to work that into some down time for a gate.

I just counted gates listed in Wiki. There were 33 listed as occupied with some of those gates pulling double duty with multiple carriers. Some of those flights are seasonal and I didn't include Condor that's why I used the "~" symbol. I have heard the number of 29 gates occupied at any given time, but that was a few months ago. Still it's going to be completely filled or even over filled the day it opens.

Eta: Condor will be bi-weekly.

I thought all commercial flights were supposed to be moving to the new terminal, and the old one would be used for office space and general aviation. This was supposed to be a cost saving move, and if they have to staff 2 terminals for commercial it seems like that would defeat the purpose of the new terminal.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I also thought the design was such that it could be expanded within its existing designed configuration much easier than currently, if ever the need so arose.

Does anyone have renderings of this project? Is this terminal replacing the current one?

35 gates would be ideal for MSY's future needs.

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Does anyone have renderings of this project? Is this terminal replacing the current one?

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Yes, it's going to replace the current one. The old one will be used for office space and general aviation.



















LINK

So this is a perfect example of an airport planning question. As Golfer mentioned earlier, the current layout has 33 gates, but split among three concourses limiting flexibility.

Assuming 30 gates in the new facility, you would want to understand what the demand on facilities would be on the average day of the peak month (typically your 90-95 percentile). In 2016, that was May 8th, with 150 scheduled departures. Assuming a fully capable common use facility (similar to AUS and the new terminal at RDU) where airlines share gates, you would have 30 gates to share among the carriers. The common industry metric is 8 turns per day, or flights occupying a gate. As a baseline the facility capacity would be 240 flights day.

In the near term this is likely an aggressive assumption as airlines will schedule based on their operational needs not the availability of gates. As gates become a constraint the airport will need to implement some kind of allocation process to prioritize existing (and new) service until capacity comes on line.

In the Europe and Asia, where this is a common practice, it is not unheard of to get 10 turns from a gate. This despite very peaky bank structures for connections.

A quick look at the 2015 FAA Terminal Area Forecast for MSY

LINK

A ratio of the peak to annual activity at MSY would imply that the airport would not hit 223 departures per day until 2040.

Lots of flexibility here, and while during the peak of the peak the airport might have to make some adjustments, the general rule of thumb is to plan to the 90-95 percentile and accept some level of service degradation on the 3-5 days when it truly blows past design.

Thanks for explaining. This is what I was getting at. Gates are like tables in a restaurant. Place may only have 30 tables but if they can turn them 5 times a day, its potentially more revenue than a place with 60 tables that only turns them twice a day.

Beautiful renderings. That'll be the nicest building in the region once completed.