When the new $1.7 billion landside terminal opens at Pittsburgh International Airport later this year, that will leave the current terminal without passengers and without its guiding purpose. And it’s not immediately clear what’s going to happen with the building, which has served tens of millions of air travelers, visitors and employees since it opened in 1992.
Most of the attention has been placed on the landside terminal, which has been designed and built from the ground up to serve the airline landscape of today and the future and not as the hub of an airline that long since merged, not once but twice. That will include not only a completely new “front door to Pittsburgh,” as CEO Christina Cassotis has called it, but also a more streamlined passenger experience from the flow to the airside terminal to state-of-the-art TSA gates and a better and quicker baggage system.
The Allegheny County Airport Authority hasn’t yet set a date for the opening, although a tour in late July showed much of the work either done or set to be done by the end of September. A dress rehearsal, with thousands of members of the community testing out the features, will be held Sept. 20…