LAX, Orlando among US airports to debut new terminals in $13b overhauls

The Terminal 2/3 Delta Sky Way in Los Angeles to the South Terminal Complex in Orlando are just a few of the multi-billion dollar expansion projects poised to open at airports across the US in the coming months. Pieces of more than $13b in airport investments in cities coast-to-coast will open as airports wrap up work that they began before and carried on during the pandemic. One of the largest imminent openings is the $2.8b South Terminal Complex at Orlando International Airport that will open for its first travelers this summer. Other coming openings include an expansion of Terminal 5 at Chicago O’Hare, the new Terminal A at Newark Liberty, and major pieces of Delta Air Lines-led projects at Los Angeles, or LAX, and New York LaGuardia. The openings come after an uncertain time for airports during the pandemic. Passenger numbers collapsed in 2020 with Orlando, one of the country’s busiest airports, handling just 1,517 departing passengers on April 15 that year. But the recovery, at least for domestic travel, has been faster and more robust than most expected with many airports — especially in leisure-oriented markets — back to near bursting. Airports that continued works through the crisis, rather than postponing or cancelling them, are sitting pretty as US domestic number approach 2019 levels. And even airlines’ capacity discipline amid elevated fuel prices, and cuts to regional flying owing to the US pilot shortage are expected to do little to slow the travel recovery. “We see low risk to our base case that passenger traffic will increase throughout 2022 and reach 95 percent of 2019 levels by year-end,” wrote Earl Heffintrayer, a senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service, in a report on March 14. The risks he referred to are the fuel price spike and pilot shortage.<br/>