The Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport terminal is on schedule to be completed by the end of December and will be open to the public in May 2024.
Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson said the city of Pullman decided to build a new airport terminal to address safety concerns raised by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about the runway and taxiway being too close together.
“FAA basically told us that if we wanted to continue with commercial service, we had to take care of that issue,” Johnson said. “So we separated the runway and added width to the runway, so we can have reliability.”
Tony Bean, Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport executive director, said the main portion of the building that the public will be in will be completed by the end of December. Bean said they have an additional $6.7 million grant from the FAA that they have to match to expand admin offices out of the public space.
“We did this to expand gates and make it bigger for the public,” Bean said.
Bean said they’re going through different commissioning systems and setting up operations for TSA, including rental cars. They are getting all their data run and making sure they know how everything works for baggage claim, he said.
“We’re getting a concessionaire in there for food and beverage,” he said. “We’re also making sure to understand who’s operating and how to operate passenger boarding bridges.”
Passengers will have access to food from both sides of the terminal, Bean said.
The administrators of the airport will continue testing operations until they have good training and understand how things will happen in the new building. Their anticipated date of opening to the public and switching to the new terminal is May 15, 2024, he said.
“We’re targeting the middle of May, so somewhere around May 15,” Bean said.
The new terminal will have baggage claim inside the building so passengers will not need to wait outside anymore. The passengers will now go through a boarding bridge and exit through automatic doors. Bean said the baggage will come through a carousel similar to the Spokane and Seattle airports.
“There is a patio area where you can sit outside on the sterile site, so once you go through the screening you can actually sit outside if it’s a nice day,” Bean said. “So there’s some neat amenities to the building.”
The current terminal is just over 8,600 square feet but the new terminal will be around 48,000 square feet which is significantly larger, Bean said.
“We knew we had a problem with the terminal when we started the runway,” Bean said. “But if you can’t land the airplane, you don’t need the building so we finished the runway and rolled right into the terminal.”
For the training process, employees will train on new systems including de-icing fluid disposal and bus transportation. Bean said they have also started discussions with the city of Pullman and possibly Moscow for public transit to the airport.
“We’re not sure how the transit will work yet but it obviously wouldn’t happen at 5 a.m.,” Bean said. “But during the day, there could be a bus stop area in that terminal building.”
Bean said construction of the new terminal is big for the city of Pullman because it will increase capacity for higher traffic and meet standards handling charter flights.
