New MSY Terminal design: taxi times to increase by 40% for inbound jets, 70% for outbound

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The project, originally scheduled to open in May 2018, is now some 18 months behind schedule and its original price tag of $650 million has ballooned to more than $1.2 billion.

Faulty construction due to cost-saving short cuts—reportedly forewarned by a building permits official in Kenner—resulted in more than 100 cracks to the facility’s underground sewerage pipes, which had to be dug up and repaired.

The interstate flyover ramp off Interstate 10 at Loyola Drive that will connect to the new facility was not planned, funded or put out to bid until after the new terminal had already been approved and was well on its way to being developed. As a result, the key artery will not be completed until at least 2023, according to state transportation secretary Shawn Wilson.

And support services for the airport—hotels, offsite parking lots, the rental car garage, and the existing passenger parking garage, which will be utilized and marketed as a cheaper, economy garage—are on the south side of the airfield’s main east-west runway and, therefore, cannot be directly accessed from the new terminal.

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......modeling estimates buried deep in the airport’s more than 200-page environmental assessment from 2013 estimated relocating the terminal to the north side of the airfield would increase taxi times for outbound planes by 40% on average, and would lengthen by more than 70% the amount of time inbound planes spend taxiing to their gates.

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“There are going to be delays because they are going to have to reroute planes,” says an air traffic controller familiar with the New Orleans airport, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “I’m not worried about safety issues. But is it a well-designed airport? No, and that is going to be rapidly evident.”

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What’s more, a key taxiway extension that the airport acknowledges in its own bid specifications has to be extended “to accommodate traffic on the north side of the airfield” won’t be ready for at least one year. How that and other factors might complicate things, if at all, isn’t clear and airport officials don’t offer much help.

“This strictly makes no sense. The job of an airport is to be functional and this airport is not functional. It’s all about aesthetics.”

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For one, the main taxiway, G, which most planes will use to get between the terminal and both runways, needs to be extended some 1,500 feet. Airport officials acknowledge the FAA flagged the extension project several years ago as something the airport had to undertake and is helping pay for the project. But the design and construction contract wasn’t awarded until mid-August and airport officials say it will be at least late 2020 before it’s completed.

“Every time you add a piece of pavement to the airfield it is going to help in some way,” Dolliole says. “You’re not necessarily correcting a flaw. You’re adding to the efficiency of the airfield.”

Still, there will be some larger jets that will not be able to take off from the east-west runway until the new taxiway is complete—unless those aircraft cross the active runway to come at it from the longer taxiway on the south side.

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Then, there’s the fact that there’s no exit ramp off the east-west runway connecting to the new terminal. Like the exit ramp off an interstate, a runway exit ramp enables a plane, as it slows, to quickly and efficiently clear the runway without having to come to a near complete stop and make a sharp right turn.

Because of the proximity of the new terminal and its B and C concourses to the runway, however, there isn’t enough space to build an exit ramp where it would optimally go. As a practical matter, this means planes will spend more time on the runway when they’re landing from the west, which means they won’t be able to land quite as frequently.

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