Grand Rapids Airport (GRR) News and Developments

[mpchicago]

22 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Pretty cool that GRR will be a hub for vaccine distribution. 
 

https://www.fox17online.com/news/coronavirus/ford-airport-prepared-to-serve-as-gateway-for-covid-19-vaccine-distribution

While watching "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" they were live in Kalamazoo talking about the distribution, and I thought to myself, I bet  a lot of that vaccine will go out of GRR and ORD. 

[GRDadof3]

On 12/13/2020 at 12:52 PM, joeDowntown said:

Pretty cool that GRR will be a hub for vaccine distribution. 
 

https://www.fox17online.com/news/coronavirus/ford-airport-prepared-to-serve-as-gateway-for-covid-19-vaccine-distribution

Those are A300's too, which I think are the largest FedEx planes to fly out of GRR, aren't they? Anyone seen one take off yet? They look HUGE on video. 

This isn't GRR but here's a shot of one taking off:

 

[walker]

 

4 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

Those are A300's too, which I think are the largest FedEx planes to fly out of GRR, aren't they?. . .  

This isn't GRR but here's a shot of one taking off:

 

Sorry, I can't copy and paste this without paying for it, but if you scroll down this link, there's a couple of photos of the FedEx A300 taking off Sunday morning from GRR with the first shipment:

FREEP: 2020/12/13/first-shipment-covid-19-pfizer-vaccines-leaves-from-GRR  

EDIT: OK, here's a photo of the takeoff:

Edited December 15, 2020 by walker
found photo

[Cookin_peacocks]

6 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

Those are A300's too, which I think are the largest FedEx planes to fly out of GRR, aren't they? Anyone seen one take off yet? They look HUGE on video. 

This isn't GRR but here's a shot of one taking off:

 

 Correct! A300s are the largest plane to regularly fly out of GRR. Large planes. Doubt we see many wide-bodies around here

[thebeerqueer]

You can hear some cheers. 

[wingbert]

22 hours ago, Cookin_peacocks said:

 Doubt we see many wide-bodies around here

Except at the Golden Corral on Alpine.

[Cookin_peacocks]

2 hours ago, wingbert said:

Except at the Golden Corral on Alpine.

Hey now!

[joeDowntown]

This is a sales-y fluff piece, but it'll be interesting to see what the master plan look like:

https://mibiz.com/sponsored-content/ford-airport-development-will-put-west-michigan-on-the-map

Joe

[Prankster]

I would think that if they are planning on making this a major commercial hub, they are eventually going to need to build direct access to I-96. 

[Raildude's dad]

They have direct access to I-96, it's called the 36th Street interchange. The airport owns al the vacant land at that interchange. Between 36th St and Thornapple River Drive  east of 36th. The airport has hundreds if not thousands of acres available for industrial and commercial development. There's no reason for any of that traffic to pass directly thru the passenger traffic component of the airport. Convenient access, yes  and that is available.

I do not understand the intermodal concept of ship (Muskegon) to truck to air transport. I cannot think of one example of something arriving by ship and leaving GR by air.  A consultant that is promoting that concept needs to be released from their contract before wasting anymore contract funds. 

[joeDowntown]

52 minutes ago, Raildude's dad said:

They have direct access to I-96, it's called the 36th Street interchange. The airport owns al the vacant land at that interchange. Between 36th St and Thornapple River Drive  east of 36th. The airport has hundreds if not thousands of acres available for industrial and commercial development. There's no reason for any of that traffic to pass directly thru the passenger traffic component of the airport. Convenient access, yes  and that is available.

I do not understand the intermodal concept of ship (Muskegon) to truck to air transport. I cannot think of one example of something arriving by ship and leaving GR by air.  A consultant that is promoting that concept needs to be released from their contract before wasting anymore contract funds. 

Yeah, I envision this changing the 36th street/Kraft/Thornapple River area (it is a nice spot for development). 

I didn't understand the intermodal part, but thought maybe it's just way out of my wheelhouse.

Joe

[Prankster]

My point about the direct access was for passengers. You already have a decent amount of semi’s clogging the intersections at the lights, especially at 36th and Patterson. If you double or triple that semi count, it will slow down traffic to a snails pace. 

[MJLO]

On 12/23/2020 at 8:38 AM, Raildude's dad said:

I do not understand the intermodal concept of ship (Muskegon) to truck to air transport. I cannot think of one example of something arriving by ship and leaving GR by air.  A consultant that is promoting that concept needs to be released from their contract before wasting anymore contract funds. 

Agreed.  Any freight that could arrive to Muskegon's port would still seem faster and cheaper to simply send LTL/FTL vs. by a ship. 

Remember that pre-covid the airport had broken ground on a major expansion for concourse A which was going to more than double the size of it.  They even had the jet bridges ordered for it.   Maybe this is designed to reboot that.  Though based on what I read it sounds like a typical economic development puff piece, and they are just going to take the available land around the airport and create special zoning and try and attract development.  Not sure their big announcement will be any more exciting than that. 

[ChevalierNoir]

On 12/25/2020 at 9:15 AM, MJLO said:

Remember that pre-covid the airport had broken ground on a major expansion for concourse A which was going to more than double the size of it.  They even had the jet bridges ordered for it. 

Wait, did they pull the plug on that expansion?

[MJLO]

15 hours ago, ChevalierNoir said:

Wait, did they pull the plug on that expansion?

They put it on hold so far as I know

[joeDowntown]

53 minutes ago, MJLO said:

They put it on hold so far as I know

Seems a little short-sighted. If they have funding, airports will bounce back with a vengeance after Covid. You’d think this would be a good time to get ahead of the game. I truly believe bars, restaurants, travel will come back strong as soon as we get a good number of vaccinations. 
 

Joe

[Prankster]

4 hours ago, MJLO said:

They put it on hold so far as I know

I don’t doubt you, but where did you see that? Did they give a revised timeline to start?

[MJLO]

22 hours ago, Prankster said:

I don’t doubt you, but where did you see that? Did they give a revised timeline to start?

I have a friend who work manages an operations department for the Airport Authority, which is who told me.  It didn't sound as if they were canceling the project, or delaying it indefinitely.  I haven't discussed with him since June so I don't know what the current status is.  They will still definitely need to customs entry corridors and stuff like that.   I haven't flown since March so I don't know what work is currently going on.  

[GR8scott]

They did just announce preliminary work on international part which is 1 of the 3 phases in the project so doesn’t seem too delayed. Seems like this would be a great opportunity time to “double down” on construction while passenger volumes are lower and less of an interference/more social distance available 

[Raildude's dad]

I listened to a presentation yesterday by the airport's  Facilities Manager. This info is from notes I took. I tried to get info i thought you all would be interested in.

2020 had $78.8 M of capital work scheduled. Once covid hits they scaled way back. They ended up doing $32.8M worth of work, projects with funding in place. The rest has been delayed. They have "delayed" $200M over the next 5 years. pending what the future will bring.

Phase 1 of the Federal Inspection Station is being completed. It includes a 4th baggage carousel. It will  be used for domestic flights until the remaining phases of the Inspection station is complete. Then carousel 4 will be dedicated to international flights.

The next project is the new air traffic control tower. The controllers must be able to visually see all the taxiways and runways. Parking garage expansion will block vision from the existing tower to the NW.  The preferred relocation spot right now is just NW of the air cargo building.  He said there's lots of things that are involved in the tower, utilities, employee facilities, parking etc. that need to be worked thru.

He said the Concourse A expansion is delayed. This project is driven by the tenants. The airlines help pay for it and they must be confident in their needed for the additional facilities.  He pointed out the concourse is very outdated.  When it was new in 1963 each waiting area was serving planes with 40-50 seats. Today the airlines are handing flights with planes of 120-150 passengers thru those same waiting areas

He also shared the average ticket price from GRR is $232.  He had lots of passenger loading statistics but i couldn't write them down fast enough.

[Winston1206]

Looks like two new direct routes will be announced tomorrow. 

Must be planning a bounce back post-COVID

[egrguy]

Guessing tourist locales.

[ChevalierNoir]

Every time they do this I get my hopes up that a legacy carrier or Southwest will bring in a useful destination with a useful schedule. And I'll still cross my fingers that we get more direct access to the west coast.

But, I'm putting my money on two new routes to sunny Florida served by Allegiant. There's still gotta be two cities we can't fly to down there, right??

[walker]

35 minutes ago, ChevalierNoir said:

Every time they do this I get my hopes up that a legacy carrier or Southwest will bring in a useful destination with a useful schedule. And I'll still cross my fingers that we get more direct access to the west coast.

But, I'm putting my money on two new routes to sunny Florida served by Allegiant. There's still gotta be two cities we can't fly to down there, right??

The GRR non-stop route page shows Allegiant starting flights to Boston, Newark, and Fort Walton all on March 5.  Didn't they already announce flights to Newark and Boston last year?  Maybe they never started or were dropped cause of Covid-19, or maybe the tease is about some place else.

grr nonstop routes

[GR8scott]

Can’t see Frontier or American or United adding any routes at this time. Delta unlikely but still don’t have service to hubs in Seattle and salt lake or long shot jfk. Plenty of possibly SW routes like St. Louis, Vegas, Houston and Dallas even PHX. But it’s usually allegiant with 2x week service for 4 months to a place like myrtle beach, west palm beach, Charleston, maybe even other competing routes with main liners like their recent Newark announcement.