RDU plans to open four gates in Terminal 1

Raleigh-Durham International Airport has taken the first steps toward reopening four gates in Terminal 1 because of unexpected growth in passengers.

Southwest Airlines, the only carrier in Terminal 1, occupies five of the nine gates in the building. The remaining four have not been used in years, and are no longer connected to the baggage handling system. Reopening the gates would also entail restoring and equipping a vacant ticket counter.

A little over a year ago, RDU completed a master plan that said the terminals would not need to be expanded until after 2025. But William Sandifer, the airport's chief operating officer, said growth in passenger traffic has outpaced the projections RDU used to make that decision. The number of boardings approached 6 million last year, about what the airport had expected in 2023.

"We're eight years ahead of where we thought we were going to be," Sandifer told the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority on Thursday. "We never anticipated growing this fast."

Reviving the unused gates in Terminal 1 is the quickest and easiest way to create more capacity, Sandifer said. The airport authority approved a contract Thursday for schematic designs, which should be completed by October. It will likely take until early 2020 for the gates to be ready, Sandifer said.

In addition to the five gates used by Southwest in Terminal 1, RDU has 36 gates in Terminal 2, where the nine other airlines operate. Southwest could expand into the four new gates, but Sandifer said more likely one of the nine other airlines would move over to Terminal 1.

The four gates are on the south end of Terminal 1, in an area where a long row of temporary gates was demolished after the opening of Terminal 2 in 2011. Sandifer said after the four gates are restored, RDU would look at expanding the building to create four more.

The RDU master plan, called Vision 2040, calls for eventually creating 23 additional gates, mostly by extending Terminal 2.

Richard Stradling: 919-829-4739, @RStradling

This story was originally published March 15, 2018 at 6:03 PM with the headline "RDU plans to open four gates in Terminal 1."