Airport Check-in
Roger Yu, USA TODAY, 5/11/2008 and 5/19/2008 (excerpted)
JACKSONVILLE: First segment of renovations finished
Jacksonville International, which is spending $170 million to renovate its 40-year-old facilities, has completed the project's first phase. Its new Concourse A, unveiled last week, is a 100-foot-wide, 570-foot-long wing that will serve some of its largest tenants, including Delta, Northwest and AirTran.
The new concourse features 10 gates (vs. eight in the old Concourse A), a 160-foot moving walkway and new restaurants and shops, including Brooks Bros., a Budweiser-theme bar and Starbucks. "The old Concourse A was boxy and dark. The (new building) has high, curved ceilings and a lot more natural light," says spokeswoman Debbie Jones.
In six months, the airport will also replace Concourse C with a new building. Current C tenants, including Southwest, Continental and American, will occupy the replacement, which will have two more gates (for a total of 10).
With the two new concourses, the airport's capacity will grow to 7.2 million passengers annually, compared with 6 million prior to the latest upgrades.
SANTA ANA, CALIF.: Recharge electronics while you wait
John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., which is about a year into its massive renovation project, has finished installing power outlets in a handful of passenger chairs in Gates 2 to 14 of the Riley Terminal. Passengers can use the surge-protected outlets to charge their laptops and cellphones.
The airport has also redesigned its new restrooms in Terminal B of the Riley Terminal to be more environmentally friendly, with touch-free faucets and soap dispensers, and low-flush toilets and urinals. The new urinals use only one-eighth of a gallon of water, well below the federal standard of one gallon maximum per flush.
New family restrooms are also now available. Restrooms in Terminal A are under renovation and will reopen by summer.
SEATTLE: Non-stop flights to China in the works
Northwest Airlines says it will launch daily non-stop service from Seattle to Beijing starting March 1.
Northwest also plans to add a daily non-stop flight from Detroit to Shanghai later that month.
ATLANTA: Registered traveler program near
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, the world's busiest airport, said earlier this month it will recommend Verified Identity Pass as the operator of its registered traveler pilot program.
The selection, which still requires city approval, comes a month after the airport said it would postpone selecting a registered traveler vendor so it could gauge other ways to cut down on security congestion.
Airport spokesman Herschel Grangent said the opening date of Atlanta's registered traveler program hasn't been determined.
But New York-based Verified Identity hopes to launch it by early summer, spokeswoman Cindy Rosenthal says. The company has about 6,000 people in the Atlanta area who have already signed up for its program, called Clear.
"I think they realized we could operate it while they were doing construction," Rosenthal said.
In April, the airport announced it would add four more of its own security lanes, bringing the total to 32, by the end of summer. That project will continue as scheduled, Grangent said.
LONDON: New terminal to receive more flights — at last
After several weeks of delays, British Airways will move more long-haul flights on June 5 to its new home in London Heathrow Terminal 5.
The eight long-haul destinations being switched from Terminal 4 are New York John F. Kennedy, Abuja (Nigeria), Bangalore (India), Beijing, Cairo, Cape Town (South Africa), Lagos (Nigeria) and Phoenix. Combined, they amount to about a quarter of British Airways' schedule at Terminal 4, which was the airline's primary base prior to Terminal 5.
BA had initially planned to move the flights to Terminal 5 when it opened in late March. But a series of operational problems at the new terminal, including baggage-handling issues, forced the airline to shift the flights in phases.