Phoenix Adding 2nd Major Airport

[Michael]

Taken from http://blogs.usatoday.com/sky/2006/05/williams.html

The Williams Gateway Airport in far-suburban Phoenix has designs on becoming a second major airport for the metro area. And Phoenix’s main airport -- Sky Harbor International -- is all for helping the nearby facility expand. “There's going to be plenty of passengers for both of us," Paul Blue, Sky Harbor's director for business and properties, tells The Dallas Morning News (free registration). With a metro population that’s expected to balloon from 3.6 million now to 6 million by 2025, “the airports here are going to have to work together" to accommodate that growth, Blue says. Phoenix-owned Sky Harbor is currently the nation’s seventh-busiest airport, a hub for both US Airways and Southwest that handles more than 40 million passengers a year. Williams Gateway, on the other hand, is a converted former Air Force base that currently has commercial flights only on tiny Vision Airlines. (Vision's flights just began last month.) But Williams is expected to eventually become a second major airport for the city, and local officials say they’ll cooperate to make sure each airport grows in a way that helps the region as a whole. “According to the thinking in Phoenix, a region should invest in multiple commercial airports under a single authority to accommodate growth for decades to come and the inevitable road traffic that follows,” The Morning News writes. (Click "read more" for the rest of this brief.)

Good for them. I guess aviation isnt in such bad shape afterall?

 

[Pilawt]

IWA is a fine airport, strategically located in a booming area of town. We know; our son, daughter-in-law and grandkids live just a couple of miles northeast of it. We fly down there so often that we bought a small condo nearby as well.

Sometimes it's a challenge getting down and stopped on the three parallel 10,000' runways, but we haven't run off the end yet! Gateway Aviation Services provides good transient service, but there is no maintenance available on the field as yet, nor are there hangars to protect visiting aircraft from the summer monsoon storms.

There would seem to be plenty of room to accommodate commercial and GA traffic. Perhaps the consortium of municipalities will be able to direct local planning to avoid incompatible land uses nearby. The huge General Motors Proving Ground is adjacent to the airport on the east, and GM has lately been making noises about selling the land to developers.

There is still some military traffic at IWA -- a couple of years ago we were parked on the transient ramp between a Harrier and an F-18, with a T-37 nearby. On our last trip they parked us next to a privately-owned F-104.

-- Pilawt

 

[Ghery]

My employer's shuttles (Embraer ERJ-135s) use IWA as well. Very convenient for that part of the area.