When the PIttsburgh International Airport built its brand new terminal in the early 1990s, it was preparing for a future as a major hub for USAir. Things have not gone quite as planned. More than 30 years later, this very morning, November 18, the airport is opening a revised version of that terminal, right-sized for its hub-less reality.
A Little History
At the time the previous terminal opened, it was a marvel. There was a large headhouse (landside terminal) and security area connected by an underground train to the giant concourse (airside terminal) in the shape of an “X.” This “X” had 75 gates with the ability to expand to 100. It was designed specifically for connecting traffic. Those people with short layovers wouldnʻt have very far to walk thanks to the design. But those with long layovers would be able to shop in the specially-designed Airmall while they waited.
And that wasnʻt all. Attached to the landside terminal was an undersized parking garage to the west and three fingers meant for ground boarding of turboprops that, at the time they were designed, still buzzed around the northeast. The first CRJ regional jet didnʻt even fly until right before the terminal opened.
To the west of the terminals was a sea of parking lots for those local travelers that would also benefit from the massive hub operation. They too were expected to go shopping in the Airmall even if they weren’t traveling.
The hub was well-utilized for about a decade, but that’s when things went downhill. After the .com bubble burst in 2000 and 9/11 happened in 2001, the industry became swiftly unprofitable. By then renamed US Airways, the hub airline had fallen on very hard times, even more than most. In 2002, the airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and tried to get the costs out so it could survive.
The Pittsburgh hub remained, but its death sentence was written when the airline did a double-dip and filed for bankruptcy again in 2004. This time, more drastic measures were taken. By the time it exited bankruptcy, it had been acquired by America West, and the Pittsburgh hub had been shuttered. The terminal, however, still stood.
In 1996, USAir had more than 125,000 departures from the airport. In 2000, that was under 95,000. It was under 75,000 by 2002 and failed to hit 55,000 by 2006. By the time US Airways took over American, it was down to about 15,000 annual departures there. In 2024, Pittsburgh as an entire airport didn’t even surpass 50,000 departures.
With no hope of a hub ever returning, PIT started to downsize where it could. It closed off some gate areas on the airside, and it shuttered the turboprop-focused complex attached to the landside terminal. But up until recently, that was about it. The structure still looked largely the same, and it was exceedingly oversized.
Maintenance on this now-aging structure was expensive, and it wasn’t really built to ease the travel experience for locals anyway. The landside terminal was big, and the required train to the airside terminal was a pain. This was not a simple airport to use, not that it mattered all that much. Where else were locals going to go? Latrobe? Yeah, right.
A plan was formed to shrink this thing down to size. The whole idea was pretty much to take the airside terminal and smush it into the west side of the airside terminal. That may sound simplistic, but, well, here we are:
The Transition to the New Terminal
With this new design, the old landside terminal sits far to the west and becomes completely irrelevant. That includes the parking garage which will be shut down. (Surface parking, however, will remain open over there with a shuttle ride required.) Apparently there will still be some offices in the landside building, at least until the end of the year, and the northernmost part of the old commuter gates will continue to be the airport’s child care center going forward. But everything else? It remains to be seen. It’ll either be razed or possibly put in the hands of a developer to redevelop. But that will be dealt with later.
Meanwhile, the train connecting the landside terminal to the airside made its last passenger run last night. And the massive airside terminal itself loses an entire side, bringing the gate count down from 75 to 51.
You can see the two pieces of the new build up above. The part attached to the “X” is the headhouse with ticketing, baggage, and security. The piece connected by a bridge to the northwest is a parking garage for locals and rental cars with a surface lot just south of there (not shown).
Why are they building that bridge? Well it’s because the new roadway will run right up to the new terminal and between that and the garage, getting travelers very close to the gates… at least that’s the plan.
I spoke with Daniel Bryan who is in charge of the Operational Readiness and Transition (ORAT) team. Daniel has done this kind of thing before, and his job is to orchestrate the transition from construction to regular use. If all went well overnight, he is probably blissfully asleep when you’re reading this.
The last international departure last night was British Airways 170 which left a little early at just after 9pm. Once that left, part of the old building could begin the shutdown. The final departure overall was the lonely Southern Airways Express flight 239 to DuBois which left five minutes late at 10pm. But once the planes were done departing, there were still arrivals.
The good news is that airplanes don’t have to make a move overnight, but other things do. When the final arrival, American 1995, got in about 3 hours late thanks to a mechanical delay at 12:24am from Chicago, then the airport could get those last stragglers through baggage claim and on their way.
By 2am, the old roads were supposed to be closed and the new ones were to be opened. Employees would shuffle into the new terminal and by the time people started arriving for that first Southwest flight to Denver at 5:30am and the first United arrival on the redeye at SFO pulled up at 5:12am, passengers should have had no trouble running through the new process.
And with that, the dream of Pittsburgh’s world-class hub will officially come to an end, but a better experience will be there for those who remain.
