America Is Getting $970 Million To Improve Its Airports. Pete Buttigieg Has A Few Ideas About How To Spend It
Source: Fast Company, Rob Verger
Photo: Annabelle Gordon/Bloomberg/Getty Images, alvarez/Getty Images
The Transportation Secretary talks to us about his favorite airports, what makes a well-designed terminal, and what’s in store for the future of domestic air travel.
Now arriving at more than 100 airports in the United States: more money. The money, which totals $970 million in grants for various projects, is thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and represents the third installment of funding for airport terminals out of a $5 billion allocation.
The projects vary in scope, from small to large. An airport in North Dakota is getting $700,000 for a new building, while Chicago O’Hare’s Terminal 3 will receive $40 million for work that includes making a central corridor wider. All told, the money is going to 114 airports for projects that include nuts-and-bolts upgrades to infrastructure and equipment like baggage handling systems, restrooms, HVAC systems, and the passenger boarding bridges that connect buildings to planes. “Some of this stuff is relatively unsexy,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tells Fast Company. “It’s the power plant, it’s the jet bridge, the bathroom, the mechanical and electrical—but that’s really important, and that’s part of what has been underfunded over the years.”
That historical underfunding has certainly started to show. In 2021, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave aviation a D+ on its “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.”
We caught up with Secretary Buttigieg to talk about airport design, terminal grants, and the state of America’s airport infrastructure right now.
Fast Company: When you’re in an airport terminal, are there certain design elements or aspects that you look for or notice that contribute to making it a good experience?
The biggest thing, and the first thing, is just does everything work? The most important quality for any airport design is that it’s functional. And part of the reason we’re making so many of these investments through the Biden infrastructure plan is that airports are showing their age in ways that affect how functional they are—part of that is, of course, the condition of the gear, the equipment, the utilities, the jet bridges, but part of it’s also the design. You think about, for example, the width of concourses. A lot of the busiest airports have become much busier than they were designed for. Their basic geometry sometimes could still work, but there needs to be more space in the concourse.
Another major issue is that so many of our airports and terminals were originally built pre-9/11, so the entire flow that you go through as a passenger is different than it would have been, and there needs to be designs for that. Even just as a frequent traveler, I often feel that I can tell whether the flow of a terminal was something that had to be adapted post-9/11, or whether it was originally built since then.
Another thing that I think really makes a difference is when you can sense some relationship between the design of the airport and the place you’re in. I was just at Portland [Oregon] on the building site of the new terminal building there, and part of what they’ve done is they’ve been very intentional all the way down to the wood and the materials they’re using, about having a lot of locally sourced construction materials that help add to a sense of place. All the way down to Traverse City [Michigan], where I now live, just that small airport immediately gives you a feel that you’re someplace in particular. That’s something that will look different in different places, but the concept is something that I think is increasingly being valued by passengers and by airport authorities.
Do you have a favorite airport?
I’ve been charmed by Traverse City and the way that it’s set up. It’s not often that you feel cozy in an airport, but they’ve achieved that. And they’ve made sure that it’s proportional to their air traffic—it’s not overbuilt, which I appreciate. Of course, I feel a lot of attachment to South Bend International Airport. I was mayor when it became international, having been known as regional before that, and we took a lot of pride in that. Small facility, but very important to the economy there.
I mean, think about LaGuardia [in New York City]. One of the few things that Joe Biden and Donald Trump had in common was speaking in very harsh terms about the shape that LaGuardia was in. If you look at it now, it’s extraordinary.
And I think I’ve shared in the past the story of how I proposed to my husband at gate B5 in [Chicago’s] O’Hare, so obviously I have some special associations with that place.
A very minor point, but you mentioned wider concourses. How important are high ceilings? It does seem like high ceilings are a way of baking in a sense of air and light to a space.
I think it’s certainly something that can affect the passenger experience, especially to the extent that it relates to what flying is—which is getting up into the air. So, if you have that sense even when you come in, that kind of makes a difference to your frame of mind—maybe even makes a difference to the way people behave in the airport context compared to if you feel tunneled or compressed.
If you were to grade America’s airport infrastructure right now, what would you give it?
I won’t do a letter grade, but I think about it as a curve. And I think that U.S. airport infrastructure fell behind the curve of the world’s airports, in a pretty big and noticeable way. Part of what we’re trying to do is move that, and I think we’re now well under way. Airports say a lot, not just about a city or a region, but about a country. And they reflect the economy, the identity, the pride of a place. And I don’t think America was terribly proud of our airports, when we got here in this administration. There’s a long way to go.
I mentioned LaGuardia. Kansas City is another one that now has an extraordinary terminal. And we’re going to see more where that came from. And I think that will reflect a country that cares about its infrastructure after all.
When you hear complaints or feedback from regular Americans about air travel right now, whether they’re talking to you about the physical airports, or the actual flight experience, or safety, are there any themes that you hear again and again?
Two things about Americans: We love air travel, and we love exchanging horror stories about air travel.
We’ve definitely been able to deliver real changes in the customer-service norm of how airlines treat passengers. I don’t think we’re done. We’ve got more work to do on the regulatory front. But just opening up transparency, the dashboard, and the pressure that we put on the airlines, led to some real results. So I’m glad to see that improve. I’m glad to see more and more airports looking, and feeling, and working better. And also performance: the cancellation rate last year was the lowest in a decade. There’s more work to be done.
None of this matters unless we have safety. That’s why the FAA is taking such a rigorous approach toward Boeing, whether it’s about one incident or a bigger picture. You’re always going to see a very intense response, even to close calls. We’ve got to make sure that we work so that safety can be a given, so that we can have the luxury of thinking about the finer points of airport design.
This interview has been condensed and edited.