Empty Sky at Instant Airports

A billboard along the interstate near Mascoutah (population 5,500) urges travelers to “Fly the Easy Choice.”

Across fields of corn stubble and sprouting winter wheat, the runways at MidAmerica Airport can accommodate the swiftest Concorde and the most jumbo of jets. The control tower is operating. The U.S. Customs station is nearly complete. Parking is free. CNN Airport News plays in the terminal.

There’s only one thing missing: flights.

Not a single airline has signed up to provide any service to the nation’s newest airport, a $313-million facility built across the Mississippi River and 25 miles east of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

TWA, Southwest, Delta, United and American all fly in and out of Lambert St. Louis International, where a $2.6-billion expansion is planned for the year 2005.

MidAmerica--the first commercial airport built in 24 years, aside from a replacement facility in Denver--and other proposed airfields have set off a debate over the shape of American aviation in the 21st century. Although the growth in air travel is undisputed, the question of how and where to increase capacity is a touchy one--involving small communities with grand ambitions, airlines with a preference for known quantities, existing airports scrambling to build additions, politics and, of course, money.

The runways are finished at the new Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, in chicken-ranch country near Fayetteville. There are groups backing new airports at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County, the far southern exurbs of Chicago and the West Virginia highlands. The notion of building a new airport is percolating through towns in Kentucky, Maine, Idaho, Florida and New Mexico as well.

“There is more activity and interest than at any other time in my 29 years in the business,” said aviation consultant David Stamey, who works in Williamsburg, Va.

The advocates for new airports say they are visionaries, positioning themselves for a coming boom and creatively keeping price tags low. Some--like MidAmerica and El Toro--are making use of closed or threatened military bases; others are employing private grants. They have every expectation that their projects will join an elite of 137 airports in this country with 300,000 or more passengers annually.

Critics, however, make fun--deriding MidAmerica as “the gateway to nowhere” and Northwest Arkansas as “Poultryport.” And they urge caution, noting that any unneeded airport by definition costs too much--especially when the financial underpinnings are tax dollars.

“Building airports is in many ways the S&L; scandal of the ‘90s,” said Denver-based aviation consultant Michael Boyd. “It’s not a question of, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ ”

Said David Fiscus, a spokesman for the Air Transport Assn., which represents 22 airlines: “It’s not foresight. It’s a gamble. It’s a heck of a gamble.”

Built for Expansion, 1 Million Passengers

MidAmerica’s builder, St. Clair County, believes it has hedged its bet.

The county designed MidAmerica’s cash flow to permit operations for five years without passengers.

At the same time, it designed the vaulted glass terminal for easy expansion to 85 gates, two more than Lambert will have after its own construction project.

“I think, in five years, we’ll see approximately 500,000 passengers a year coming through here,” said MidAmerica director Floyd “Rick” Hargrove. John Baricevic, chairman of the county board, begged to differ. “I say a million.”

Over at the terminal, MidAmerica’s monitor announced a battery of Delta and United departures to destinations ranging from New York/La Guardia to Dallas-Fort Worth.

But the roster was entirely fictional. Baricevic cocked an eyebrow. “We are thinking big.”

Sitting at his desk in the red-brick ranch house that once sheltered a farm family and now contains MidAmerica’s administrative office, Hargrove held up a sheaf of papers covered with printed legalistic phrases and occasional blank spaces.

“I’m going over an airline contract,” he said, adding in droll postscript: “Unfortunately, I don’t have a name to fill in.”

Northwest Arkansas Regional is slated to open late this year, in the hamlet of Highfill, not far from Fayetteville’s 60-year-old Drake Field, which operates at 40% of runway capacity. No airlines have yet committed to Northwest Arkansas, although the $107.6-million airport was built to handle Boeing 747s and MD-88s.

Carol Lindsey, president of Ozark International Consultants, which oversees the project, expresses a level of confidence similar to MidAmerica’s backers. She is courting American, Delta, Comair and Northwest, she said, and predicts 305,000 to 310,000 passengers annually by the end of 1999. About 519,000 passengers moved through Drake last year.

Lindsey already is talking about lengthening the runway to 12,500 feet--in the same league as Chicago-O’Hare International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport--and she wants to build a second parallel runway.

New Arkansas Airport Labeled a Boondoggle

The Fayetteville-Springdale region is the sixth-fastest-growing in the United States, just a few hours’ drive from Branson, Mo., the popular country-music town.

Still, the area’s population is relatively small, about 261,000. Opponents have labeled the second airport a boondoggle, grumbling that local corporate powerhouses like Tyson Chicken, Wal-Mart and J.B. Hunt, the long-haul giant, will be the major beneficiaries. (All three put up money for the initial airport study in 1990 that led to federal grants.)

To question the raison d’etre of airports rising where none have been before, Lindsey said, is “assuring that there’s areas that can’t grow, and that’s not right. You’re shortchanging an area from being the best it can be.”

No overarching national policy guides the location of new airports. “To build an airport is a local decision,” said David Schaffer, counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee on aviation.

And whether those airports will have planes arriving and departing is a decision made elsewhere yet again--a corporate conclusion reached by various airlines.

The Federal Aviation Administration does have a key role to play. It dispenses $1.7 billion granted by Congress each year for airport construction, and the National Civil Aviation Review Commission recently urged pushing that figure to $2 billion. One commission member, Ben Hirst, senior vice president at Northwest Airlines, said the panel had in mind additions to existing airports.

“Each case is different,” Schaffer said, “but building early does make sense.” Dulles International Airport near Washington, he noted, was ridiculed as a white elephant for nearly 20 years after it opened in 1962, yet now is expanding despite the presence in the region of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

Now comes a time when aging airports have become surrounded by established neighborhoods that make growing difficult and when military bases--with runways, control towers and accomplished aviation mechanics living nearby--are becoming available.

MidAmerica, for example, “began with the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Baricevic said.

Scott Air Force Base--along with its 10,000 jobs and $2-billion ripple effect through the region’s economy--narrowly escaped closure during the last wave of military cuts.

St. Clair County, determined to keep Scott safe from any future budget ax, proposed a joint venture that gave the base the extra runway length it needed for newer Air Force jets and the less-dense east side of the Mississippi an airport of its own. That airport, county officials hope, will spur further growth.

For construction, the federal government chipped in $154 million, the state $60 million, the county $6 million. To move families and build housing for them, the Air Force paid $60 million and the county $33 million. The county had begun putting more than $1 million aside each year since 1985, so the whole thing was accomplished without a local tax increase.

Persuading Airlines to Use New Airport

Pouring concrete and erecting steel beams is one thing, but persuading airlines to provide service is another. Fiscus, of the airlines trade group, couldn’t think of one new airport or proposal that was stirring members’ interest. MidAmerica: “There’s a great server nearby at Lambert.” Northwest Arkansas: “That’s not a project that we support at this time.” El Toro: “We don’t see it as a need.”

As for established discount airlines and commuter airlines, they already are being wooed by existing medium-sized airports looking to add more flights. “Southwest has a standing list of 100 communities that want their service, and AirTran has 40 or 50 communities,” said Stamey, who specializes in the medium-sized market. He estimated that two dozen airports serving populations of 750,000 are underutilized.

Start-up airlines have generally proved unreliable, with many failing within a year.

Airports naturally want to lure airlines with staying power that offer many flights a day. The airlines pay fees based on the weight of each plane taking off or landing. Airlines also pay rent for terminal space and baggage handling.

But it’s hard to get someone to make that first move.

Airlines, which operate on slim profit margins, want proven numbers of paying “passengers, passengers, passengers,” Fiscus said, before they commit.

As for the travelers, they want a full complement of scheduled planes and destinations. “In certain circumstances, I could use Mid-America,” said Craig Partridge, a guidance counselor meeting an incoming friend at Lambert, “like if they had an airline that went where I want to go.” But Rich Hoffschweller, arriving in St. Louis from Detroit, muttered: “No. It’s too far from where I do business. And you better have TWA or you’re not going to have an airport.”

‘Vision Is Sometimes Optimism’

Even Leonard F. Griggs, a former FAA official who signed off on MidAmerica, said: “Vision is sometimes optimism.” He is now director at Lambert.

But, he hastened to add, “I think it will be a good investment for the country.” He sees MidAmerica as a cargo port and perhaps a relief valve when Lambert is fogged in or overloaded.

“Everybody would like scheduled service,” Stamey said. “That’s more a case of ego-nomics than reality.”

Yet Baricevic says he won’t consider MidAmerica a success unless other airports around the country are listing its departures and arrivals. He’s waiting for the day when the older airports are so congested, so noisy and so plagued by delays that the traveling public gets fed up.

Surveying the pristine jet bridges, the unmoving baggage conveyor belts, the sculpture above the empty central court, Baricevic smiled.

“It won’t get used for a while,” he said. “But it’s here and it’s ready.”