So Many Planes! The Good, Bad and Ugly of Cities That Punch Above Their Weight in Air Travel

does everyone have a love-hate relationship with airports or is it just me as in do you love the airports make it possible to go coast to coast in like five hours and hate basically everything else about them well this is a top 10 list for the love part of that relationship it's the top U.S cities that provide pound-for-pound the most air travel in the United States and it's up next this is City nerd weekly content on cities and transportation viewer suggested topics always welcome and yeah I do log all of the ones that grab me and sometimes it just takes a while for inspiration to strike like this one is from seven months ago but I did not forget you Jake Noble North American Metro areas with the most and least disproportionately busy airports I bet Charlotte would be number one you know that's just throwing down the gauntlet and if there's one thing I like doing on this channel it's disabusing people of their priors and I did like the idea of the most disproportion busy airports and I know where to find the data for the US so that's the way I went with this so to be honest my primary interest in this question is as a sort of cool obscure piece of trivia because I am a trivia nerd but as I got into researching it and coming up with answers it became really interesting to think about why the cities that are on this list are on this list and also a more philosophical question is it good to have a disproportionately busy airport on the one hand it's a city that's punching above its way in terms of Departures and destinations which is really valuable if you like to travel on the other hand it's more space devoted to runways and Logistics and parking facilities it's more noise it's a mixed bag also even though I'm a travel buff let's acknowledge that airplanes aren't the most environmentally or climate friendly travel mode air travel probably isn't priced appropriately to account for all the external qualities and a lot of the flights out of the airports that are on this list could and should be replaced by High-Speed Rail trips okay I'm trying to get to the list relatively quickly today but let's talk about data for a sec you can get busiest airports lists on Wikipedia but I needed a more extensive data set for this so it's an FAA file called commercial service entainments and that is your word of the day this is people getting on planes regardless of whether it's the beginning of a non-stop flight or is for a connecting flight on a multi-leg journey that might give you a hint as to where this list is going and the metric I'm using for this list is Employments per capita calendar year 2019 so pre-pandemic although stuff has really bounced back in 2022 so hopefully we can get back to using the most recent data on some of these lists and the denominator is metro area population 2019 estimate so this actually ended up up not being that easy I had to find every airport that serves a metro area so over 50 000 population and I had to aggregate Employments wherever there were multiple airports and the airports in the FAA data set aren't organized by metro area so I had to figure out where Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks is with no additional geographic information which was at least as tedious as what you're imagining but I'm not gonna lie it was still a lot of fun just because that's how big of a dork I am so today's top 10 list is a bit off the wall and it's definitely designed for you to play along by guessing what's going to be in the top 10 based on whatever it is you think might contribute to a high number of Employments per capita so that's the setup let's get into it number 10 is Miami with seven emplainments per capita in 2019. this includes Miami International Fort Lauderdale Hollywood and Palm Beach this one shouldn't be a huge surprise South Florida is a tourist destination in its own right but also big for the cruise industry and also connecting flights to the Caribbean and South America Miami International is a big hub for American Airlines and has tons of flights to the Caribbean and South America well Fort Lauderdale seems to do more domestic business with lots of destinations served by carriers like JetBlue Southwest and spirit make of that what you will number nine is San Francisco Oakland with 7.3 implements per capita this includes SFO and Oakland International SFO handles a lot of domestic travel but it's United's primary trans-pacific Gateway as well I don't really want to go full airport nerd here but Runway lengths and configurations are super fascinating to me SFO has two tightly spaced parallel two mile runways to handle all those long-haul flights but whether you can use both of them at a given time depends on wind fog and even whatever is happening at Oakland International Oakland is nearly all domestic with a lot of Southwest and spirit so I guess what I'm seeing here is Oakland is basically the Fort Lauderdale of Northern California number eight really surprises me it wasn't higher as it has been the world's busiest airport by Passenger traffic since 1998. it's Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson which does nine emblems per capita but now you should get the sense that a city on this list is either going to be a key tourist destination in its own right or a major airline Hub which for Atlanta means Delta and it's purportedly the largest single passenger airline Hub in the world a thousand flights a day to 225 destinations number seven apologies to viewer Jake Noble but it's Charlotte North Carolina where Charlotte Douglas does 9.3 implements per capita to continue a theme Charlotte is a major American Airlines hub the airline's second largest after DFW and American actually operates about 57 of the flights in and out of the airport which I do think puts Charlotte at number one on the list of significant U.S airports that are disproportionately served by a single Airline so I hope that's consolation number six is Orlando at 10.2 implements per capita the vast majority of this is from Orlando International with just a bit of Sanford International mixed in Orlando is not a transfer Hub it's a destination for pretty obvious reasons I actually have a lot of thoughts on this there are various plans out there to connect SunRail Orlando's Regional Rail to the airport or to build an East-West light rail line between the airport and the Orange County Convention Center I don't know what about an East-West rail line that connects the airport to all the theme parks and hotels along I've for an International Drive with all the tourism and employment they generate is that just too crazy of an idea I mean I guess just having huge strodes and ginormous parking lots everywhere is working pretty well too so I don't know number five is Honolulu inuya International which rounds to 10.2 per capita as well honolulu's position on this list Lake Orlando is mainly due to tourism but it is the hub for Hawaiian Airlines so there are lots of connecting flights to the other Islands as far as the 10.2 I actually don't know if I agree with the denominator which is the metro area population the Honolulu metropolitan area is defined as the entire island of Oahu which always seemed off to me I mean having your entire metro area be contained on an island makes the mpo's transportation modeling a lot more straightforward but I mean the North Shore is 30 miles away with mountains in between I'm not sure I buy it but maybe it doesn't make that much of a difference in the calculation the towns on the North Shore are pretty small number four is Salt Lake City which is the Western hub for Delta 10.5 implements per capita you know I do wonder about the trade-offs of being a major airline Hub it's convenient to have more flight Connections in your city but man that is a lot of noise pollution and a lot of acreage fairly close to the center of the city dedicated to a facility that's largely intended to serve people who are just flying through because the airline made them do it number three is Las Vegas 11.1 implements per capita this one probably isn't surprising after all what major U.S city has a more tourism-dependent economy I mean yeah Honolulu and Orlando but those cities do not have the 12 largest hotels in the United States Real Talk Harry Reid International Airport is probably the primary reason I'm living in Las Vegas right now it's just super cheap and convenient to get wherever you want to go it's really the airport of a much larger city which is great in my opinion except for the fact that it has the transit connections or lack thereof of a very small and impressive city which is something I have lots of ideas about okay while you puzzle over the top too including a number one that does practically double the implantments per capita of any other metro area brief reminder to drop a like on the video If just the idea of airports fills your heart with unmitigated Bliss subscribe if you want this app to serve you more of the same kind of scintillating content check out the patreon link in the description if you're interested in supporting the channel directly and sub count check the channel now has enough subscribers to fill Husky Stadium in beautiful Seattle Washington it's an urban college football stadium I don't know if I'd call that Urban used but it has a link station it has a connection to the lovely Burt Gilman Trail and what college football stadium has a better view bow down to Washington people no honorable mentions would you want like the city with the 11th most Employments per capita in 2019. trust me it's not worth it number two is Denver International 11.5 Employments per capita I thought about riffing on the Denver airport conspiracy theories but this is a serious Channel and I don't have time for that Google it yourself if you must anyway this is apparently the largest airport by land area in the U.S it serves as a hub for United and Frontier and it's a major operations center for Southwest too it's about as far away from the city as you'd expect from an airport that's designed to facilitate the movement of people who aren't visiting your city at all before Denver International opened in 1995 Stapleton airport was closer in and now it's been redeveloped with a mix of vaguely Urban land uses so this raises the question that really grabbed me as I was going through this process given everything we know about airports both the good and the bad is it better to cite them close to the city or further away or if you think it depends then tell me what your variables are I'm interested in the conversation number one might have been tough to guess it's kahui Maui with 22.7 implements per capita again the denominator is a little weird since they count the whole island as the Kahului metro area and that's around 150 000 but even if they didn't you would still have 50 000 Plus in the greater Kahului Wailuku area so it would still qualify as a legit metro area and then the per capita number would just be an even bigger outlier than it already is and that's it your champion of dis fortunatements an island that looks like a guy trying to swim and not having much success that's all I've got roll the patron credits I appreciate you guys a lot thanks for joining today keep the Off the Wall topic suggestions coming I'll be back for the new episode next week probably on a radically different topic just to keep you all on your toes I'll see you then

Channel: CityNerd

Views: 100,166

Keywords: urbanism, urbanist, urban, high speed rail usa, why usa has no high speed rail, high speed rail, high-speed rail

Id: EVgzh7wyj9A

Length: 12min 24sec (744 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2022