How Houston Rebuilt Its Entire Airport From Zero | And Actually Got It Right

Please Subscribe For More👉 ‪@flightlevelhq‬ It is October the eighth, two thousand and fifteen, and a group of Southwest Airlines executives is walking a line of reporters through a brand new international terminal at Houston's William P. Hobby Airport, one week before it opens. The glass gleams. The exposed steel trusses run clean overhead. A fully built United States Customs and Border Protection station stands ready and empty, waiting for its first passenger. Less than fifty years earlier, this same airport had been switched off completely, stripped of every airline in a single night and left for dead. But here is where the logic breaks down. This terminal came in ten million dollars under budget and finished on schedule, in an era when almost no major American airport project does either. Across the country, terminals arrive years late and hundreds of millions of dollars over. This one did the opposite, and it was the first terminal Southwest had ever built. So the question is not whether Houston got lucky. The question is what Houston understood about building an airport that nearly every other American city, spending far more money, still does not. Sources & Further Reading: Houston Airport System – William P. Hobby Airport Master Plan https://www.houstontx.gov/planhouston... U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission – Southwest Airlines, Houston Hobby International Terminal Project https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... Skytrax – Houston Hobby Airport Becomes the First 5-Star Airport in North America https://skytraxratings.com/houston-ho...