The state’s busiest airport is making a change to the area were passengers board plans as it gets closer to opening a brand new terminal.
Des Moines Airport communications manager Sarah Hoodjer says they are changing the designations for the boarding gates. “Instead of a letter and a number, it’s just going to be a straight number. So what this will do is it will coincide with the opening of the new terminal. So eventually one day you’ll start at number one and go all the way through,” Hoodjer says. The new terminal will have 6 gates and the 13 current gates will still be used.
Hoodjer says they will make the number changeover tonight and passengers showing up for a flight Wednesday will see the new designations. “The gate numbers will align with what’s on your boarding pass, as long as the airlines did their job and push out the information as well,” she says. “All of our FID (flight information) screens will reflect which gate number you’ll be going to. So hopefully it’s a nice smooth transition. That’s what we have everything set up to do. So hopefully that’s how it actually executes.”
She says the construction of the new multi-million dollar terminal is on schedule for the January opening. “We’ve got ceilings, we’ve got just a lot of those last minute finishing touches going in. We’ve got some carpet in the hold room, so it’s really starting to shape up,” she says.
Hoodjer says the new terminal will be welcome as they remain busy. “We’ve got numbers still kind of climbing. We do have some airlines that have informed us they’re going to start taking a look at some schedules and maybe pulling back a little bit just due to fuel prices. So we might start seeing a little bit of a decrease later this summer. But yeah, we’re still people are still getting on those flights and still going,” Hoodjer says.
Information released with the proposal for the new terminal showed 65% of people who fly out of Iowa use the Des Moines Airport.
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