A little less Southern discomfort for air travelers
In sheer size no other airport in the world can match it. With its twin terminals and 138 boarding gates, the new passenger complex at the William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, which opened last week, sprawls over an area equivalent to 45 football fields. The $500 million jetport is far bigger than its closest rival: the terminal at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport covers a mere 29 football fields.
For frequent air travelers around the South, the opening came not a day too soon. There is a lot of truth in the old saying that: "Whether you go to heaven or hell, you have to change planes in Atlanta." Indeed, 72% of all travelers landing in Atlanta stay only long enough to catch another flight. Both Eastern and Delta Airlines use the airport as the center of their Southern networks. Eastern passengers flying south from Mobile to Miami, for example, can get there only by first flying north to Atlanta.
With so many air lanes leading to Atlanta, Hartsfield became seriously overburdened. The old terminal, built to handle 18 million passengers annually, last year had to accommodate 42 million. Mobs at the ticket counters, long treks to the planes and indefinite delays on the runways made Hartsfield notorious as a dispenser of Southern discomfort.
The new airport should be less of an ordeal. Although the outermost gates are a mile from the terminals, underground electric monorail cars will whisk people to the planes at 25 m.p.h. Expected to carry 250,000 riders a day, the airport monorail will be the nation's fifth busiest rapid transit system, ranking ahead of San Francisco's BART, which hauls 160,000 passengers daily. Moving sidewalks, computerized baggage handling, and a one-stop security checkpoint equipped with twelve electronic screening devices will also minimize the Hartsfield hassle. By 1985 travelers will be able to reach downtown Atlanta, nine miles away, in 17 minutes on a new branch of the Atlanta metro. Although designers spent $450,000 on contemporary art at the airport, most critics were unimpressed. Quipped Atlanta Journal Columnist Ron Hudspeth: "They could have gotten off much cheaper with a couple of velvet bullfighter scenes from K mart."
Atlanta's position as the Southeast's business center and its commitment to air travel are closely linked. In 1961 the city built the region's first modern jetport, which helped attract a wave of corporate immigrants. More than 80% of the top 500 U.S. companies now have offices in Atlanta. The number of conventions held there has soared from 440 in 1968 to 860 this year. Atlanta's trade-show coliseum, the Georgia World Congress Center, already booked solid through 1989, is asking the state legislature for $86 million to almost double its size. Hartsfield's eight daily international flights to seven countries have also helped attract foreign firms like West Germany's Commerzbank to Atlanta.
Conscious of then-past problems, Atlanta Airport officials are already planning a fourth runway that will be ready for landings and takeoffs in 1983. By the year 2000, Hartsfield will be able to handle 75 million passengers a year, nearly double the present load. Even transfers to heaven or to hell should now be easier in Atlanta.