For those who’ve traveled via Seattle-Tacoma Worldwide Airport in the previous couple of months, you will have observed it’s a bit extra crowded than it has been within the latest previous. Put up-pandemic air journey has already surpassed pre-pandemic ranges and all indicators are air journey will proceed to develop. What does the long run maintain? Much more demand for air journey, however not sufficient capability at our state’s largest airports to fulfill that demand.
In 2019, the state Legislature created the Business Aviation Coordination Committee to discover choices and supply a single most popular location advice for a brand new or expanded airport to fulfill the anticipated future demand for air journey. Throughout three-and-a-half years, the CACC, together with Washington State Division of Transportation Aviation, examined 18 current airports (17 within the Puget Sound space and one in Moses Lake) and 10 new airport “greenfield” websites. Solely Paine Area was acknowledged as having the potential to accommodate a small portion of the forecasted want. The general public, in addition to native and state elected officers, responded with overwhelming opposition to all the choices examined by the CACC. The committee disbanded in July of 2023 with no substantive suggestions.
In January 2023, the town of Yakima, Yakima County and a number of other Yakima-based organizations expressed confidence to the CACC that the Yakima airport could possibly be half of the answer to the anticipated air-travel capability dilemma in our state. Assembly the problem of accelerating demand for air journey would require each established and progressive approaches, each of which the Yakima airport is well-positioned to embrace.
The Yakima airport has supplied industrial passenger service for many years and has the required infrastructure in place that could possibly be enhanced and expanded to accommodate further flights. It’s centrally situated within the state, fewer than 4 miles from Interstate 82. And, due to its average climate, the Yakima airport already serves as the first diversion website for Sea-Tac and accommodates massive airliners a number of instances every year.
Yakima can be advocating what may in the present day be thought of a considerably out-of-the field resolution to future air journey capability points — a decentralized system using electrical and hybrid-electric planes. Washington state aerospace firms like MagniX, Eviation and ZeroAvia are pioneering sustainable aviation, which holds nice promise in altering how we consider air journey in the present day.
The WSDOT 2020 Electrical Plane Feasibility Examine recognized 60 neighborhood airports in our state that may accommodate smaller electrical/hybrid-electric airplanes. Beneath a decentralized air journey system (generally known as “distributed air service” within the business), vacationers would now not have to make the oftentimes-arduous trek to Sea-Tac however as a substitute take a brief drive to their native airport and board an electrical/hybrid-electric aircraft to Yakima. A 30-to-45-minute flight from places throughout the state would land passengers in Yakima, the place they might make a connection to their remaining vacation spot and keep away from Sea-Tac solely.
A decentralized air journey system is opposite to what we’ve got developed and turn out to be accustomed to. Nonetheless, it’s clear there is no such thing as a urge for food in Washington state to proceed to comply with the “mega airport” technique. Replicating Sea-Tac or Paine Area is solely not an out there choice. The method advocated by Yakima is forward-thinking and deserves truthful consideration as a part of the answer to our state’s predicted air journey quagmire.
The Legislature has created a brand new Business Aviation Working Group to select up the place the CACC left off. With Sea-Tac estimated to succeed in full capability in lower than a decade, the group must discover artistic choices for fixing the looming air journey drawback. We’re working to verify Yakima’s visionary plan is one in every of them.
