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Home / Washington Business - November/December 2004 / Sea-Tac Pumps Economy with 160K Jobs |
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Sea-Tac Pumps Economy with 160K Jobs |
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Written On: November/December 2004 |
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Written By: |
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Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is a massive influence on Washington state’s economy.
Consider the numbers. Last year, the airport, popularly known as Sea-Tac, pumped into the state’s economy:
• 160,545 jobs, both at the airport and dependent on it.
• $4.6 billion in salaries.
• $420 million in state and local taxes.
Around 27 million travelers pass through Sea-Tac each year, making it the 17th largest U.S. airport in passenger volume. Approximately 30 airlines have regularly scheduled service to and from Sea-Tac, providing direct transportation links from Seattle to cities throughout the nation and abroad. Alaska Airlines and its subsidiary of Horizon Air account for about 46 percent of Sea-Tac’s traffic.
Less known among the general public, but of enormous consequence to Washington’s economy, is Sea-Tac’s air cargo traffic.
“I think we’re about the 30th largest U.S. airport on the cargo side, so it’s not as significant as Sea-Tac’s passenger role,” Sea-Tac’s airport manager Mark Reis observed. “On the other hand, if you were to ask certain businesses in the state how they could function without Sea-Tac providing air cargo service, they would say they couldn’t make it without us.”
Approximately 350,000 tons of cargo goes through Sea-Tac each year. The merchandise is very different from the cargo shipped through seaports or transported by rail.
“We handle very high value and low weight cargo that is critical to an increasingly large party of this country’s and this region’s industry,” Reis said.
Although much software produced by Washington’s high tech industry is distributed electronically, Sea-Tac still plays a major role in shipping of these products. In addition, Washington’s aircraft industry contributes greatly to Sea-Tac’s cargo traffic.
By value, the largest product that comes through Sea-Tac is aircraft parts. Boeing’s spares facility, which is the company’s primary distribution point for parts throughout the world, is located by the airport. Boeing located this facility near Sea-Tac in order to be able to ship parts anywhere in the world within 24 hours.
Sea-Tac’s economic influence extends far beyond its location in the Puget Sound region. Indeed, Washington’s fruit growing regions east of the Cascades are heavily dependant on the airport to ship their produce to distant, international markets.
“During certain parts of the summer, Sea-Tac has huge numbers of planes taking fruit to Asia,” Reid stated. “These products would never be able to hit the Asian fresh fruit market on time any other way than by air.”
Sea-Tac has grown and changed enormously since it opened to full commercial service in 1949. Located on a plateau south of Seattle, east of Puget Sound and west of the Kent Valley, Sea-Tac was created by the Port of Seattle in response to the need for a major airport other than Boeing Field. The first regularly scheduled jet service came in 1959.
Today’s airport largely dates from a major remodeling and expansion project in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the revamping was finished, Sea-Tac was one of the most state-of-the-art airports in the nation.
Full of superlatives and innovations, Sea-Tac became a point of pride for residents of the Puget Sound region. Among its most celebrated features was the largest parking garage west of the Mississippi River and the completely underground Sea-Tac Subway, which still transports passengers between terminals — only the second such airport transportation system in the U.S. when it opened in 1969.
Inevitably, however, as the Puget Sound region grew and air traffic increased, the cutting edge airport of the 1970s lost much of its luster and became inadequate for the demands of the late 20th and the early 21st centuries.
Civic leaders realized the need to upgrade the airport and authorized a multi-year capital improvement project to be completed in 2010.
The most controversial element of the project was the construction of the third runway, which AWB actively supports. Held up for years by environmental lawsuits, litigation has finally been dropped and construction has resumed on the third runway, which is slated to open in 2008. Once in operation, the runway will significantly boost Sea-Tac’s efficiency in handling landings and takeoffs.
“The third runway will be an all weather runway,” airport spokesperson Deanna Zachrisson said. “We have two runways only 800 feet apart. If we have low clouds or any degraded visibility, we’re down to one runway or staggered landings since we can’t land airplanes on two runways simultaneously. With the third runway we’ll always be able to maintain at least two flows of landings and takeoffs in conjunction with the first runway with two runways over 800 feet apart.”
Sea-Tac is also making security enhancements. Two new passenger screening checkpoints opened in 2004, and the north checkpoint was reconfigured to maximize passenger throughput.
Baggage screening is being moved from the ticket lobby to a much faster, less labor intensive system where bags will be fed into screening machines directly by conveyor belt. This will free up Transportation Security Administration personnel for passenger screening.
Three million dollars under budget and four months ahead of schedule, the Sea-Tac Subway has been completely refurbished. Just outside the terminal, Sound Transit is planning to link the airport to downtown Seattle via light rail by 2009.
On the terminal’s south end, airy and spacious Concourse A opened in June to rave reviews. With 1 million square feet of new space, Concourse A was the biggest expansion to Sea-Tac in 30 years and the largest construction project in Washington state.
Come April 2005, the public will see a spectacular new expansion westward of the central terminal. The new space will become Sea-Tac’s retail heart. It will also bring back the integrity of the original 1949 terminal, lost when the addition of restaurants blocked grand views of the runways.
“Those views will bring back some of that old nostalgia and excitement about flying,” predicted Zachrisson.
And so Washington’s airborne gateway to the world — a city unto itself and a major economic factor in the region — marches into a promising future while honoring its past.
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