Sea-Tac Airport had a big day today -- the ceremonial (pre)opening of its new International Arrivals Facility.
The old facility is a bottleneck, limited to 1,200 inbound passengers per hour at customs, in a cramped, inefficient facility. International-capable gates were limited to the South Satellite terminal. This became a big problem as traffic surged from about 1,200,000 inbound international passengers per year in 2010 or so to 2,869,935 in 2019. Airlines were hitting the upper limit.
The new facility includes a bridge from the South Satellite to the new entry hall alongside Concourse A, plus sterile corridors from several of the A gates so they can serve international routes. The arrival hall is huge, at 450,000 sf.
Here's a tour and here's the
Port of Seattle project page.
My question is how much airlines will shift to Sea-Tac as an international hub. We did 5,727,899 combined international passengers in 2019. Will that edge up slowly, or really take off? Signs suggest a real surge. We're way behind San Francisco, Vancouver, and others. But will we gain some ground? Will the 5.7m turn into 7, 8, or more?
Here are
international destinations for Summer 2022 -- six in East/Southeast Asia, two on the Arabian peninsula, seven in Canada, six in Mexico or Central America, and seven in Europe, totaling I believe 43 flights per day. Some like Beijing and Bangalore are still out of commission since Covid.