The Surface Area Solutions Project
We got a lot of pushback on our last podcast This Will Never End. Many people struggle to believe the airport can add more capacity. Especially when the airport itself moans constantly about how challenging it is to work on such a small footprint.
Perhaps this three minute video will help. It describes a program the airport has been working on since the SAMP began (but not part of the SAMP environmental review) called the Surface Area Solutions Project.
As we keep saying, airports are ports. Getting any ship, land or air, in and out as quickly as possible is the difference between making or losing money.
Airplanes already ‘turn ‘ several times a day. But even greater efficiencies can be gained using automation–and not only in the air. At a modern airport the ground now often uses software and tech more sophisticated than what is in the tower.
Most of you are only now becoming familiar with AI. As you can see, airports like Sea-Tac have been working it into those ground systems for almost a decade. This is one more technique, not part of any environmental review, they will use to add as many new flights as adding a new runway.
The challenge for people living under the flight path is changing our thinking about how airports expand. In the past, adding capacity meant adding a runway–which required construction permits–which then triggered an environmental review. Something physical.
But how does one get concerned residents to recognize that ‘AI’ is just as relevant for NEPA and SEPA as any construction project like a new taxiway or gate?
Think about how much more throughput any factory can get via automation. This is no different. An airport is a factory.
You’re still thinking hardware. But they’ve been thinking software.
Stop obsessing over forecasts. Just assume that Sea-Tac can find ways to accommodate whatever number of operations the airlines (and the Port of Seattle) can gin up. It always has. And unless someone says ‘enough’, it always will.