When BWI bet on Southwest Airlines 13 years ago, passengers drove from as far away as Philadelphia to snare the low fares.
Cheap tickets, however, aren't unique to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport anymore. And passengers aren't willing to sacrifice things like convenient parking, good roads and shopping when deciding where to fly from if ticket prices are similar.
That's one reason why BWI put the finishing touches on $1.6 billion, five-year expansion and improvement program last week. They believe it will help them to keep passenger traffic flowing.
Airport officials say passengers have a lot of choices, especially since popular discounters such as Southwest Airlines and AirTran Airways have been ramping up operations at many airports. To cement its place as one of Southwest's largest hubs, BWI made the airline's state-of-the-art, $264 million terminal the anchor of its program.
Upgrades to the airport building and roadway also doubled retail space, expanded curbside drop-off and ticketing space, added new shuttle buses, a daily parking garage and a stand-alone rental-car facility.
Passengers, who have long griped about such things as parking, ticket and security lines and lack of international flights may not be altogether won over, but several last week said they like some of what they've seen.
Scott Drake, a contractor from St. Louis on a job in Winchester, Va., drives past Washington Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia every two weeks to fly home on Southwest from BWI.
"Mainly, I don't want to think about the airport, but I have to," he said. "I'd really like the [long-term] parking to be closer to the terminal. But the shuttle bus isn't bad. In fact, this time I didn't have to wait at all, the trip was pretty quick and it was easy to get into the terminal."
Easy. That's what BWI officials were hoping to hear.
Construction officials said there have been a lot of little improvements, such as the wider curbs, bigger elevators, moving sidewalks and brighter terminals with an eye to a smooth trip for 55,000 daily passengers.
Construction took five years largely because crews had to keep the airport open for business, said Christopher Mills, construction manager for Parsons Corp., hired by airport officials to oversee the project.
