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Ironically, both Kansas City and Dallas-Fort Worth started building new airports in the mid-1960s, before Congress acted, and both worked out bold new schemes. The key ingredient: empty space. Kansas City bought and took options on 10,400 acres just 17 miles from downtown. The Texas cities dropped their traditional rivalry to purchase 17,400 acres—a parcel larger than Manhattan Island—midway between them. The extra land around the runways forms a buffer between airport and community; it is reserved for light industry, warehousing and other uses unaffected by the roar of jetliners.
Even better, the planners have made the new airports into more pleasant places for air travelers—and shortened the long voyage home as well. At the $250 million Kansas City International, which was dedicated last month, Architects Kivett and Myers designed three almost circular terminals, with as many as 19 gates each, and laid out a fourth circle for future expansion. In effect, they are planned like the simplest (and oldest) airports, with planes on one side of the building, ticket counters practically on top of the gate and parking spaces at the front door. Instead of long hikes from curbside to plane—a quarter-mile is not unusual—the departing passenger drives to a parking lot close to his gate, checks in at the counter and boards his flight. Total walk once he gets to the terminal's door: 75 feet.
Dallas-Fort Worth, which will open next fall, uses the same principle—on a Texan scale. Four semicircular terminals stand on opposite sides of a central access road and are linked by an automated intraterminal transit system, a "horizontal elevator" capable of carrying 8,000 people an hour. Eventually, as air traffic increases, the $700 million airport will expand by building nine more identical buildings with a grand total of 234 gates—enough to handle 60 million passengers a year, or the projected needs to the year 2001.
However efficient the "drive to your gate" scheme seems, it does have a few drawbacks. Architects at the St. Louis firm of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, principal designers of the Texas airport, admit that airlines will have to add personnel to service each gate. In Kansas City, J.J. O'Donnell, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, worries that the many gates will hinder anti-skyjacking procedures. "I've seen a sieve with less holes," he says.
But the real problem with gigantism as a solution to the airport problem is that big plots of land are simply not available on the crowded East and West coasts, where air traffic is most congested. In response, New York City is now studying the possibilities of building a new jetport five miles out at sea. "FAA studies indicate that it would cost about $7 billion to create an airport island in the Atlantic," says Lawrence Lerner, the project's designer. "But to build a comparable airport inland would cost at least $5 billion—not counting the costs of transportation and pollution." There may be no other alternative.