An Allegheny County Airport Authority spokesman dismisses concerns (as reported by the Post-Gazette) that the newly opened $1.7 billion midfield terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) will end up raising ticket prices for passengers.
That, as the P-G reported Sunday, “as costs related to the terminal have increased, things will accordingly continue to get more expensive for Pittsburgh International’s partner airlines in the near future.”
To wit, the average cost per enplanement (CPE) this year is expected to rise from $16.69 to $17.64. The pre-pandemic CPE was $9.77, the P-G notes.
But those higher costs won’t trickle down to customers, the Airport Authority spokesman insisted to the P-G.
However, David Castelveter, once the chief spokesman for the old US Airways, which shuttered its PIT hub in late 2004, reminds the P-G “that airlines operate on narrow margins, and they have a ‘fiduciary responsibility’ to their shareholders to pass on higher expenses to the extent possible without losing customers.”
Further, the P-G reports: “Now that the terminal is finished … Castelveter believes that it’s only a matter of time before ticket prices start to rise at Pittsburgh International.
“’Airlines don’t eat costs,’ he said. ‘If their costs to operate at a particular airport increase, then it’s very likely that you will see, in some capacity, increases in fares.’”
And that’s elementary. That’s fundamental. That’s economics.
While the Airport Authority argues to the P-G that per-enplanement costs likely would have risen if the new terminal had not been built because the old terminal and other operations would had to have been given the maintenance and updates they required, we can’t imagine those would have cost anywhere near $1.7 billion.
Castelveter told the Post-Gazette that many of the old facility’s shortcomings, like the cramped TSA checkpoints, could have been fixed with measures less expensive than an entirely new terminal.
“And while getting rid of the old terminal’s trains may save the airport money, it hurts customer satisfaction by making them walk longer distances,” the P-G says, again citing Castelveter.
“This is one hell of a cost associated with one-half of an airport facility,” he says. “I don’t know that there’s anything in the new terminal that will encourage somebody to say, ‘Geez, I think I’ll fly because there’s a new airport terminal.’”
Or, as Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, succinctly put it: “This will be an albatross in coming years.”
Which, of course, will lead to calls for further airport “improvements” to cover up the lie of the last airport “improvements.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
