Does PIT really need a new terminal?
I have only been through the present Pittsburgh International Airport once, in 1995, just a few years after the new complex opened. It consists of a landslide building and an X shaped airside building (with airside mall) connected by an underground tram system. The four arms of the airside building have 75 gates.
The airport authority is embarking on a plan to demolish the existing landslide building and move it up against the airside terminal. This would eliminate the underground train and also a number of the gates.
The airport authority claims that the existing airport design was built to the specifications of US Air when that airline had a hub there and as that airline withdrew from using it as a hub in favor of PHL and CLT, the design no longer "works". The airport had 21 million annual passengers at the height of hub status in 1997 but had 9 million passengers in 2018.
Just curious for any more recent perspectives on this. What are operational flaws or problems at the existing PIT? It seemed like a perfectly functional design to me.
Wikipedia article on airport: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_International_Airport