PIT flight plan
The airport’s savvy CEO is showing results
Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, has one eye on the sky and another on the ground. While she works to build Pittsburgh International Airport’s portfolio of nonstop domestic and international flights, she’s also looking at possible rightsizing and modernization of the 24year-old airfield.
The airport was built as a US Airways hub, with the capacity to accommodate more than 30 million passengers a year. But it serves only about 8.2 million a year, thanks to the abandonment of Pittsburgh by that airline and its consolidation with American. As many as 20 or 25 of the airport’s 75 gates go unused, creating a cavernous, empty feel. During a meeting Wednesday with the Post-Gazette Editorial Board, Ms. Cassotis called it a “what happened here?” feel that belies the region’s resurgence.
“It’s old,” she said of the airport. “It needs to be upgraded.” The authority now is in a master-planning process to set the stage for the next 30 years. Ms. Cassotis praised the design of the X-shaped airside terminal but suggested — nothing is definite, she stressed — that unused gates might be demolished. They’re getting too old to be useful anyway, she said, noting that a smaller footprint would save money and help with her goal of keeping costs as low as possible for airlines she wants to retain or recruit.
Ms. Cassotis described the current facility as a “US Airways airport” and asked what a “Pittsburgh airport” might look like. She said it should capture the region’s vibrancy and showcase its arts, culture, new economy and even the food scene. If the number of flights continues to grow, she said, new, modern gates could be added.
The airport can point to success in attracting innovative airlines like OneJet, which provides nonstop flights to markets such as Indianapolis and Milwaukee, serving the business traveler on small aircraft with efficient service. Ms. Cassotis said she continues to work diligently on adding nonstop flights, both to domestic destinations such as Seattle and San Francisco and international ones such as London and Germany. Insisting that the region has the numbers to support the flights, she contends the bigger problems are airline business models and the need to better tell Pittsburgh’s story to business people and wouldbe tourists in the U.S. and abroad. A dynamic salesperson for the airport as well as the region, Ms. Cassotis takes her show on the road at every opportunity, from joining VisitPittsburgh for a tourism promotion in London to showing up in Qatar to convince the bigthinkers in the Gulf that flights to Pittsburgh should be in their longrange plans for access to the technology world.
In 18 months on the job, Ms. Cassotis has given signs of her ability to reverse the airport’s long stagnation. We’re hoping we won’t recognize the place when she’s done with it.