flyerCO

However It has a bus to take you from end to end.

MCO Flyer

I’m not sure why everyone is complaining about how long the new terminal is as the old terminal wasn’t small by any means. The walk from the RJ gates in F (formally B) to the end of the D Gates was a pretty long walk.

dmarge18

Because it's the Delta Message Forum and there has to be something to be upset about . In all seriousness, you're right, that airport always had some long walks. I haven't been to the new terminal yet, but I would assume there are plans for better people-moving transit when it's actually complete in a few years. Short-term pain I'd think.

p100a

Wondering how baggage claim is going to work - from what I can tell everyone must collect their luggage and then funnel into 1 escalator downstairs to ground transportation. I think this is the only airport I have seen where baggage claim is not on the same level as ground transportation. I can see this being a huge bottleneck, especially in winter with all the skis etc.

Mountain Explorer

If you put everything on the same level, then that means that passengers have to walk across multiple lanes of chaotic traffic (pickups, ubers, hotel shuttles, etc) to get to the parking structure. This is usually only done at smaller airports.

Grade separating is significantly safer and more efficient. But it means that you sometimes have to go up or down cause things are on different levels (that's literally what grade separation means). At SLC, the walkways to the parking structure (which is a major source of revenue for the airport) are on the same level as baggage claim. The shuttles and uber are 1 level below, and the departures are 1 level above

Zorak

Finally passing through here for the first time. It's definitely big, but I don't think any worse than DTW or JFK T4, although as others have observed DTW has the tram (when it's operating) and JFK has the jitneys.

Pleasant surprise/underrated feature: the TP in the bathroom is decent quality 2-ply, not the usual industrial scratchy sandpaper you might expect in a commercial environment. Wonder if that's because the excess demand for residential vs office supply during COVID has skewed the pipeline over to that side.

canyonleo

They sure build narrow moving walkways for how much real estate they had to work with... barely two-wide (as they had before). Fine for now, but not for holiday or peak travel and certainly not for years forward, IMO.

PotomacApproach

Was there a few weeks ago with an A to A connection. Liked the new SkyClub and much nicer terminal. Don't mind walking, but also don't typically book connections <75 min.

DLASflyer

Some interesting insights from Moody’s:

N830MH

Excuse me! How you know about new Concourse C? Only they have A & B concourses. Concourse C won’t be there in the near future. I think Southwest Airlines will take concourse C. If they add more specific new routes from SLC in the future.

Right! Once construction is completed in 2024. Other airlines will be at concourse B. DL will take whole A concourse. They will extended east A concourse. You don’t have to complain anymore. You don’t have go to B concourse anymore.

cmd320

I mean, someone is going to have to go to B...

Mountain Explorer

I think the point is you won't likely be doing a 30 minute connection between A and B (unless you book that intentionally on 2 different tickets with 2 different airlines, which would be a very silly thing to do)

amanuensis

Right, in most cases the only people using B will be passengers arriving at or departing from SLC since there is very little connecting traffic at SLC on airlines other than Delta. And even if a person did connect at SLC on, say, Southwest, that person would be staying in B.

Regarding N830MH's question about Concourse C. It is in the long term planning documents. But there are no present plans to build it on any set date. The planners were just good Boy Scouts and wanted to be prepared for any possible eventuality. There could even be a Concourse D constructed if the need ever arises. That was the whole point of starting again from scratch. So that the airport would not ever again paint itself into a corner, like it had with the old airport semi-circle design that could only be expanded so much. This document https://slcairport.com/assets/pdfDoc...ugust-2020.pdf states that the plan is to build Concourse C when/if the airport gets to 38MM annual passengers. In 2019, the old airport hosted 26.8 MM passengers arriving and departing. https://slcairport.com/about-the-air...ic-statistics/ If business travel remains depressed post-COVID because of a permanent change to virtual meetings whenever possible, then SLC may never get to the Concourse C threshold.

DLmedalliongold

I'm pretty sure the Delta hanger, Skywest Hanger and many buildings will need to be demolished to make way for a Concourse C. Not sure how a Concourse C would fall in place with the ATC tower as well.

DLASflyer

The Delta hangar hasn’t looked so good lately. There’s a huge hole in the front where Delta sign used to be. Been that way for a number of months now with no sign of work to fix.