HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The Houston Airport System says it’s been working to accommodate a growing number of passengers for years.
“We want to be good to the passengers all the time, not just for these magic, you know, World Cup period,” Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation at the Houston Airport System, said. “It’s fortuitous timing that we’re going to have this new infrastructure available for the World Cup, but again, we want to make sure that we have a good passenger experience all the time, not just World Cup time.”
Last year, 48.4 million passengers flew through Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, which is its highest annual total to date, according to the Houston Airport System.
Szczesniak said plans for expansions at the airport started about 10 years ago.
“We knew as Houston grew, we needed to grow with it,” Szczesniak said.
As part of their plans, he said Terminal E has reopened to passengers for ticketing and will soon serve as the ticketing lobby for Terminals D and E, in hopes of simplifying international travel.
Passenger pickup and drop off has also re-opened at Terminal E and there are now 11 lanes to drop passengers off, he said.
There are also 17 TSA screening lanes inside with the most up-to-date equipment, which Szczesniak said is one of the largest in the U.S.
“This is really going to give us the capacity that we need to move people through the facility,” he said. “Our goal is always to keep your TSA wait time at the airport less than 22 minutes, and so with us being able to put this new infrastructure in, we’re going to be able to hit those goals.”
The Uber and Lyft pickup area in Terminal C has doubled in size, which Szczesniak said came back as a “pain point” on passenger surveys.
He said the airport system has also reworked traffic configurations and opened new curbs to get traffic flowing.
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While the international expansion is done, Szczesniak said Terminal B, which primarily operates United flights, is in the midst of a $2.5 billion transformation that will significantly increase the number of travelers it can handle.
The Houston Airport System says that the project is scheduled to be done by next fall.
Throughout the Bush airport, there are new concourses, seating, artwork, restaurants and added parking and bathroom renovations are currently underway.
“Mayor Whitmire is very demanding on making sure that we improve the experience here,” Szczesniak said.
Terminal D-West Pier, which was a 160,000-square-foot expansion of the existing international terminal, opened last October and is equipped to accommodate larger planes.
Szczesniak said that will be key in welcoming fans for the World Cup next year.
Other things the airport has done to prepare for the games include putting airport employees in orange uniforms so they’re easy to spot and expanding their app to include 40 languages.
“We talked to the World Cup folks and we’ve got an informal competition among the airports to figure out who does it best,” Szczesniak said.
Ultimately, he said airports are competing for travelers, including which airports passengers want to travel through on layovers, and which ones they are trying to avoid.
“If we have bad, outdated facilities, people do not want to transfer through there, so with this new upgrade that we did to the international facility, we’ve got this new concourse, new restaurants, new seating, new ceilings. The old original part of Terminal D, we replaced everything in there,” Szczesniak said. “We want to actually have that really good experience because you want to find an airport to transfer from that’s really nice. I have airports that I don’t like, and so I want to make sure that this airport is not like that.”
He said about 40 percent of their passengers are just passing through Houston on a connecting flight, so he wants to give them an experience to remember.
“They’ll never get off the campus here, and so we want to make sure that we give them a welcoming thing to say, ‘Hey, listen, Houston looks pretty cool. I want to come back here and actually visit,'” Szczesniak said.
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