ATLANTA — As Hartsfield Jackson International Airport prepares for what could be a record-setting holiday travel season, airport officials are busy updating their master plan that will bring future changes.
Just in time for the holidays, work has wrapped up on a $66-million dollar project to update technology at the Main Security Checkpoint. Meanwhile, work is underway to widen Concourse D, a project that won’t be complete until 2029.
Frequent flier Patrick Chashe has been inconvenienced at times by all the changes. He’s not complaining.
“Be a little understanding,” Chashe said. “They try to make it as efficient as possible given the size of the airport and the amount of people that come through here.”
Atlanta’s airport has come a long way since the small operation built on the site of an abandoned racetrack in 1925. By the year 2000, Hartsfield Jackson had earned the title of the world’s busiest.
Tom Nissalke, Hartsfield’s Assistant General Manager for Planning and Development, showed 11Alive aerial photographs of the airport over the past 20 years while pointing to the most important developments, including the 2006 addition of a fifth runway.
“It’s similar to adding another lane to a roadway,” Nissalke said. “You’ve got big backups when you have two lanes. You add another lane and those delays really do go away.”
There’s the 2012 opening of the International Terminal.
“That has really put Atlanta on the map worldwide as far as being an international airport and international city,” Nissalke said.
There’s the opening of a car rental center in 2009, the opening of 150 new restaurants inside the airport in 2015, and the expansion of the airport’s deicing area to keep planes moving in winter weather.
“When the deicing occurs here it’s quite an event because it doesn’t happen that frequently,” Nissalke said.
Future plans include widening the area for pickups and drop-offs in front of the terminals and replacing some of the plane trains. First, the parking decks next to the terminals will be replaced.
Much of the work will be ongoing when Hartsfield Jackson turns 100 years old in 2025.