South Bend Airport building capacity with $70M repavement project
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Classes resume this week at the University of Notre Dame, meaning South Bend’s busiest travel season is just around the corner. And, as Marcus Freeman and the Fighting Irish ramp up practice before their home opener Sept. 2 against Tennessee State, South Bend International Airport CEO Mike Daigle is prepping his team for an expected increase in traffic brought by game day fans.
Notre Dame fans historically travel well, Daigle said, but training staff for this year’s football travel season comes with an additional set of considerations.
The airport is midway through a multi-year, $70 million terminal apron and taxiway reconstruction project that is decades in the making. Since terminal apron construction began this spring, the airport has closed a couple gates at a time to not only replace aging concrete nearest the airport’s nine-gate concourse, but also to dig up nearly 35,000 cubic yards of dirt to lessen the height of its terminal apron, the section of concrete closest to the airport gates where planes park to board passengers.
The airport is also redesigning a stretch of taxiway further from the terminal to create a safer, more navigable path for pilots.
“It enhances safety and security, which is two of the things that we focus on constantly,” Daigle said. “Sometimes, it’s as simple as how we train our people to drive on the airfield… but then, it’s also, ‘How do we build infrastructure to make it the safest possible?’”
Airport staff say the closures have not affected travel and are not expected to through football season this fall. While airlines flying into South Bend are typically assigned their own gates, South Bend International officials are redirecting some airlines into shared gates throughout the construction to minimize effects on travel. Crews will work as long as they can into the cold winter months and resume work in the spring with final completion expected later next year.
South Bend International Airport CEO Mike Daigle talks about keeping travel moving through construction.
And, that’s good news for South Bend International as it sees a quick return to post-pandemic travel. Passenger travel is up more than 10% so far this year compared to 2022, and Daigle said the airport is on track to surpass 2019 travel, which was among the best the airport had seen over the last decade.
So, how exactly does an airport benefit from reducing the height of its terminal apron? At South Bend International, jet bridges — the hallway that connects an airport terminal to planes for passenger boarding — are fixed at their gates and move vertically to meet the door of a plane. Planes of different sizes have different door heights, meaning the slope a traveler walks to meet one plane may be less than that of a slightly larger plane.
The Americans with Disabilities Act sets rules for how steep these inclines can be. Shaving 2.5 to 4.5 feet off of the terminal apron’s height can lessen the slope of those connecting hallways, Daigle said, meaning even larger planes can taxi up to South Bend’s gates once construction is complete. And, servicing larger planes could potentially unlock new travel destinations.
Daigle declined to name specific additions the airport is working toward, saying only that Denver has been a long-time wish. South Bend International currently offers direct flights to nearly a dozen cities, including major hubs like Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas/Fort Worth through Allegiant, American Airlines, Delta and United. In June, the airport announced Delta would return its daily, nonstop flights to Detroit in September after the airline suspended the service last fall amid nationwide labor shortages.
“We have a list and it’s really driven by data and ‘Where are travelers going?’ and so that’s what we use when we go to talk to airlines” said Julie Curtis, the airport’s vice president of marketing and air service development. “We are working continually with different airlines for different routes.”
Resurfacing the airport’s terminal apron is one of several projects underway or planned in the coming years at South Bend International. The airport, like many industries, put improvements on hold during the pandemic due to economic uncertainty and delays in funding, but is moving forward now with plans for both short- and long-term changes.
A new private hangar for one of the airport’s longtime corporate clients is near completion. Airport officials are also looking to move the South Bend terminal’s business center to open up its eighth jet bridge and add covered awnings to the airport’s front drive. They have weighed a redesign of the area nearest baggage claim.
Daigle discusses bringing the community into conversations about long-term master planning.
Long-term, Daigle said the airport is considering extending its single terminal west, again opening up the possibility for more flights to new locations. Daigle said he envisions the project could be completed in two phases, each adding an additional five to seven gates. Airport officials, however, did not put a timeline on the project, which will most likely be driven by the availability of funding.
The airport’s recent projects are largely dependent on federal funding. About 90% of the current terminal and taxiway projects are financed federally with the other 10% coming from the state and the airport’s local funds.
Daigle, however, said the airport has a good case for the expansion, considering General Motors and Samsung SDI’s commitment this summer to build a $3 billion electric vehicle battery cell plant in nearby New Carlisle. The plant is expected to create 1,700 manufacturing jobs in St. Joseph County and with new jobs, Daigle said, comes more travel.
“If you’re looking at 1,600 or 1,700 jobs on that facility alone, that doesn’t count spin-offs,” Daigle said. “Could it be dramatic for us? Yes, it absolutely could, but we have to be thinking about it.”
For more on what’s new at South Bend International and for updates during the football travel season, see the airport’s website, flysbn.com.