South Burlington City Councilors have gotten an update on the Burlington International Airport’s operations and on-going expansion.
The airport is in the midst of a terminal expansion, is moving forward with a Climate Action Plan and continues a noise mitigation program.
Director of Aviation Nic Longo began his presentation at Monday’s council meeting providing facts about the airport.
“We are what’s classified as a small hub airport. That’s an FAA classification for Leahy-BTV. Right now we’re projecting to see over 1.4 million passengers this year. That’s both outbound and inbound into our area. We are the second busiest airport with commercial service in New England, second just to Boston. We are incredibly busy,” Longo said. “And the complexity of the type of operations from military, commercial, corporate, general aviation, electric aviation. And of course we have our Vermont Army and Air National Guards supporting our operations at the airport specifically with aircraft rescue and firefighting as well as mutual aid throughout the surrounding area.”
Longo also updated South Burlington officials on Project NexT, featuring an expansion of the North Terminal.
“If you’ve ever flown out of our Gates 3 through 6, this area very skinny hallway that has four gates down there, was designed 25 years ago. And an area designed for 200 people is now housing about 1,000 people at a time. It does not work for us,” Longo stressed. “Congestion on the inside. Congestion on the exterior building. The planes are getting too long. We’ve actually restricted the size of aircraft sitting at some of these gates. We’re building for the flexibility of the future of the airport. These four gates will be demolished after our Project NexT is expanded so that we can build and right size the terminal building for what the future is. And we also want to build it sustainably.”
The airport’s Noise Exposure Map update for the years 2024 to 2029 has been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. Airport Director of Planning Engineering and Sustainability Larry Lackey said they have been updating their noise maps over the last year and a half to reflect the basing of F-35 jets with the Vermont Air Guard. He described progress on a sound mitigation and insulation project on homes near the flight line.
“We have 68 houses under construction for home improvements with sound insulation, windows, HVAC, doors. That’s all going on this year. We are currently doing outreach for 220 units, 142 of them in Winooski, 19 in Burlington and 59 in South Burlington. And now we’re set up to do all this outreach and design up to a hundred homes and get back into construction as soon as we get those designs done. Which we’ll have over the next year,” Lackey reported.
Six airlines currently fly into the airport including Delta, United and American. There are a number of fixed-based operators, including the electric aircraft manufacturer BETA Technologies. The Vermont Air National Guard is also based at the Burlington International Airport.
