Adele C. Schwartz

Southwest Airlines yesterday announced it will launch service at the new Northwest Florida-Panama City International Airport next May, operating at least two daily flights to four undisclosed destinations. The airport, slated to open May 18, is being built on land donated by St. Joe Co., Florida's second-largest landowner and a major developer in northern Florida. Under a "strategic alliance" between the companies, St. Joe agreed to reimburse SWA on a quarterly basis if the airline incurs losses during the first three years.

Hanoi's Noi Ban International will get two new runways and other new facilities and its existing space will be renovated to handle 25 million annual passengers and 260,000 tons of cargo by 2020, the Vietnamese government said. The airport will be upgraded to A380 standards.

Tan Son Nhut International in Ho Chi Min City will be expanded and improved to handle 23.5 million passengers and 600,000 tons of cargo a year by 2015. Improvements also will be made to the airports serving Cam Rahn, Chu Lai, Cat Bi, Danang and Phu Bai.

In the final years of a $6.3 million airport redevelopment program, Miami International is looking at everything from a diversified shopping and services center to mineral extraction to gambling machines for the additional $500 million a year it will need to cover airport operations and debt service.

In the first six months of this year, MIA's passenger traffic was down 1.4% and aircraft movements off 9.3% compared with last year. It has lowered its landing fees 39% for the current fiscal year to help its airline tenants get through the recession.

After defeating an environmental challenge to building its main runway, the only new air carrier airport under construction in the US is aiming for a late May or early June opening next year. Panama City-Bay County International is being built along the northern Gulf Coast of Florida on 1,300 of the 4,000 acres donated for the project by the St. Joe Co., which will develop nearby commercial and industrial districts. A 41,000-acre conservation area adjoining the airport will protect the state's West Bay shoreline.

US airport privatization appears to be another casualty of the worldwide recession as investors back away from facilities with falling traffic and revenue. Collapse of the deal to sell a 99-year lease on Chicago Midway for an up-front payment of $2.52 billion leaves US FAA's pilot privatization program without a major airport.

AIRPORTS ACROSS NORTH AMERICA ARE designing, conserving and recycling their way into a greener future. Many of these environmental programs are producing savings that will help contain airport costs for their airline tenants.

FINALLY, THE END IS IN SIGHT FOR the biggest--and longest--airport capital improvement program underway in the US. Miami International's new North Terminal, the last piece of the airport's $6 billion-plus modernization that began in 1992 and already has produced a 28-gate, 1.7-million-sq.-ft. South Terminal, a fourth runway and expanded cargo, parking and road facilities, is on track for completion in 2011. When this reporter last visited MIA in late 1999, the target date was 2007--and even that was four years later than previous estimates.