At the end of the day, I'm in favor of keeping the airport where it is currently. The strategic advantage of having an airport so close to downtown cannot be understated. And there is opportunity to lengthen runway 4/22 to the necessary 10,000 ft for long haul service and even add a parallel runway adjacent to 21R/30L (which is in the current master plan). IMO, SAT should keep the airport, build it to the max that the land available will allow, then when comes time in the distant future, they create a new airport as a secondary for low cost carriers. Atlanta is currently considering doing something similar. Just eyeballing, the existing airport could potentially be expanded to around 75 total gates (Current total is 24). At current, I don't foresee SA getting lucky enough to be a hub airport, but if need be, that gate count could help an airline make SAT a small hub or focus city.

Yeah I really don't understand the argument for building a new airport. There's plenty of space at SAT currently for a couple new terminals and runways. There's many airports that are physically much smaller than SAT but are much much busier. And like you said, the central location is a big advantage.

Airport to stay put
 

I believe this would make the most sense for our thriving city!

https://therivardreport.com/study-ex...g-san-antonio/ :cheers:

Agreed x 100. There's plenty of room for terminal expansion and there are ways to extend runway 4/22. The article even mentioned rerouting a nearby creek. As long as demand continues growing, the flights will come!

Now can Delta give us their flight to Seattle now? :D

Someone with aviation experience commented that newer long-haul airplanes don't need as long a runway as before. I imagine that trend will continue as airplane design advances. So it seems the location may be fine even in the long term. Hope so... it's a good location. The demand for flights just needs to rise in order to get those direct flights.

I remember hearing something along those lines also. It only makes sense as technology advances, runways wont need to be as long.

Not necessarily the case. Newer, long-haul jetliners are more fuel efficient. However, they still fall under the rules of aerodynamics. Even for newer (long-haul) aircraft, a runway of about 9,000'-10,000' is the bare minimum required for fully-loaded TATL/TPAC flights.

One or both of SAT's runways will have to be lengthened to support commercial TATL/TPAC flights.

Either way, the mentioning of runway work is encouraging, and the fact they want to keep the airport in its current location. Also, full disclosure, I work for the contractor that ran this study, just up in Denver. :tup:

Airport Plan
 

Everyone here is an interesting preliminary study presented to city council earlier today. :cheers:

https://3snpdc2ba9m5uwuk62n8cs84-wpe...10.24.2018.pdf

Thanks. Interesting. I'm not an airport expert, but the one thing I question is the potential closing of the east runway. It seems like it would make sense to keep it for at least two reasons: normal optional use of another runway, and the need for a different approach under certain wind conditions. :shrug:

The mid field terminal option is interesting and something that I never considered. This would lay the runways out similar to Bergstrom and would necessitate the need to close the crosswind runway. I'm not sure how access would be gained to the mid field option, but that would be cool if SAT explored that option further. The independent parallel runway IMO is the only way to go, dependent parallels cannot land aircraft at the same time, only in succession I believe. This was one of the main issues with Denver Stapleton.

Streak at 27 months!!
 

Let's keep this up!:cheers:

https://www.sanantonio.gov/Portals/0...-25-164752-700

Fantastic! Up over 700,000 passengers from this time last year! If the airport just adds a little less than 300,000 additional passengers through the next 3 months, its assured that SAT will reach that 10mil mark. I don't see that NOT happening at this point. :cheers:

I'll be one of them... coming and going. (So I guess I'll be two of them.)

The duality of man, here on our little forum. :cheers:

If the year-to-date growth of 10.7% over 2017 (through September of 2018) is maintained...then SAT should come in at just a very tiny hair under 10 million.

Either way, this is outstanding growth!!!

(like button)

Apologies if there us one currently under development...but, is SAT still running under the 2050 master plan approved in 2011?

Spirit just announced they're starting service to Austin in 2019 what about us? We really need to step up our game.

SA needs to step its game up but you have to remember this is Spirit Airlines. Awful customer service and fees up the wazoo.