# Big airport projects that opened, but never really worked out. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 9, 2013, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832 "2013-08-09T20:13:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JerrySTL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e274bd/32.png) [@JerrySTL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerrySTL)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832/21 "2013-08-10T18:17:54Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > I see KBLV used to be Scott AFB - not sure a preexisting military field whose civilian conversion has been a disappointment are really what the OP is after, either. But there are more than a few of them. I live and work near there. MidAmerica and Scott AFB are joint use. There’s a taxiway between the two runways. Scott AFB is still a military base which houses Transcom and Air Mobility Command plus a bunch of other smaller units. MidAmerica loses about $12 million a year and our local government keeps pouring money into schemes for the airport that seldom work out. My tax money not at work. :mad: To make matters worse, while MidAmerica was being built, Lambert in St. Louis decided that they needed another runway. They spend $1 billion (big B) to build the thing which included closing an entire town. One end of the runway is miles away from the terminal and the runway is seldom used. Before 9/11 it may have made sense to build MidAmerica OR the new runway at Lambert, but not both. After 9/11 neither are needed. Heck American Airlines basically stopped using Lambert as a hub and has cut hundreds of flights. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2013, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832/22 "2013-08-10T23:46:15Z")
Ah, yes – a lot of places did work on the assumption that “if you build it they will come” or at the very least “if you build it they won’t leave”, and either developed or expanded under the expectation that passenger loads and numbers of flights would be going nowhere but exponentially up. Little did they imagine that a bunch of airports built as hubs would today have a lot of vacant space and be mostly served by Regionals, and that the goal of the airlines would be to have _ **fewer** _ seats out there flying. Dade-Collier TNT was proposed to be the southeastern USA’s hub for long-range SST’s and SuperJumbos and their stopping point between Europe and South America. The long-range SST was abandoned (and the long-range SuperJumbos only showed up decades later), so people quite sanely did the same to Dade-Collier. > [@JKellyMap](#): > > Stewart Airport, in the Hudson Valley about 55 miles north of New York City. When Nelson Rockefeller was governor around 1970, the government bought a bunch of farmland around the existing airport which had minor traffic (general aviation for the small city of Newburgh, plus a long runway for occasional flights related to West Point Military Academy), intending it to become the NY metro area’s third international airport (after JFK and Newark). It never happened. Yep, after WW2 Stewart Field became a full-time AFB until 1970, when it was handed over to local GA and support for West Point use, and this was another case of the state thinking that they could latch on to a transferred airbase and redevelop it into something big. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832/23 "2013-08-12T22:43:33Z")
Knock airport in Ireland was built largely through the lobbying of one man, Monsignor James Horan who mysteriously managed to persuade the Premier at the time, Charles Haughey, to finance its construction. A change of government saw the funding cut off, with the airport half-finished. Horan went on a fundraising drive, chiefly through a lottery, to raise the money. The facilities remained hugely underused for years, though it is now said to be the Republic’s 4th busiest with about 600,000 passengers a year. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832/24 "2013-08-13T21:43:38Z")
> [@Mk\_VII](#): > > Knock airport in Ireland was built largely through the lobbying of one man, Monsignor James Horan who mysteriously managed to persuade the Premier at the time, Charles Haughey, to finance its construction. A change of government saw the funding cut off, with the airport half-finished. Horan went on a fundraising drive, chiefly through a lottery, to raise the money. The facilities remained hugely underused for years, though it is now said to be the Republic’s 4th busiest with about 600,000 passengers a year. The rise of RyanAir seems to have saved that airport. The airport is located in an area of high outward emigration so there’s plenty of demand for flights to Knock from British cities as people visit their families at home. ---
**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832/25 "2013-08-14T05:41:09Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Stewart Airport, in the Hudson Valley about 55 miles north of New York City. When Nelson Rockefeller was governor around 1970, the government bought a bunch of farmland around the existing airport which had minor traffic (general aviation for the small city of Newburgh, plus a long runway for occasional flights related to West Point Military Academy), intending it to become the NY metro area’s third international airport (after JFK and Newark). It never happened. There are a few commercial flights a day, but they’re expensive and inconvenient for most. More cargo, I think. The state lands have mostly reverted to forest, used for hunting and birdwatching, with a bit if warehouse development along a bordering interstate highway. Agreed. The story I heard was that the investment in this airport was based on the assumption that gambling would be permitted at the Catskill resorts, that were dying (the Borscht Belt) in order to resuscitate them. That didn’t happen. As for passenger flights it remains a white elephant. I don’t know if the cargo traffic actually makes it viable. ---
**Author:** ![butler1850](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@butler1850](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butler1850)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832/26 "2013-08-15T20:30:49Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > WEll, its not a major airport, but the Worcester (MA) airport has zero passenger traffic, and it costs MASSPORT about $8 million/year to run. The guy at the car rental counter sleeps most of the day. Clearly an airport built in the wrong spot for anything resembling commercial traffic. Even starting on 495, it’s probably easier to get to Boston’s Logan. I worked in Worcester (at the hospital) for 2 years, and traveled by that area regularly, but had to look it up on a map to figure out where it is. In order to get to it, you’d have to get off of 290 (a disaster of a highway as it is.) then drive through the heart of Worcester to get to the terminal. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832/27 "2013-08-15T22:04:47Z")
Columbia, SC has a lovely convenient airport that nobody local uses unless your company is picking up the tab - it’s shockingly expensive to fly out of for reasons that have never really been articulated to me, so most people drive to Charlotte (or now Southwest flies from Charleston.) You can get a shuttle service for 50 bucks a person that picks you up at your house and takes you to the Charlotte airport. It’s an insane waste. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-airport-projects-that-opened-but-never-really-worked-out/665832.md?page=1)