Miami International Airport (MIA) has just made an exciting announcement. I know what you’re thinking — how could the world’s finest airport become even better? Sorry, I’m kidding… obviously that would be unfair to Cairo! 😉
In all honesty, this is a positive development. By the time it opens, it’ll be the airport’s first new terminal in over 20 years.
In this post:
Miami’s six-gate Concourse K opening early 2029
The Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners has just approved the construction of the new Concourse K, as part of the airport’s $9 billion “Modernization in Action” plan. The new concourse will come with an investment of $600.6 million, and will include the following:
- Design and construction of six new contact gates
- Construction of an associated aircraft apron and jet fuel hydrant system
- A ground support equipment maintenance facility
- Installation of two new baggage make-up carousels
- Upgrades to the existing baggage handling system to connect the Central and South Terminals
Under the current plans, Concourse K is expected to begin construction this summer, and is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2029. Of course it’s worth emphasizing that airport construction projects rarely run on schedule.
Miami Airport currently has nearly 56 million annual passengers, and the goal is for the airport to accommodate up to 77 million annual passengers by 2040.
Below is a video that gives you a sense of where the new Concourse K will be located. Unsurprisingly, it’ll be positioned past Concourse H & J, along the airport’s outer roadway. It sure looks modern, much more so than any existing terminal at the airport.
This is Miami’s first new concourse in over 20 years
When Concourse K opens, it’ll be Miami International Airport’s first new concourse since 2007. It’ll also replace Concourse G, which was built in 1957, and lacks modern amenities, and access to immigration facilities. So yeah, Concourse G sucks, but it has more gates than Concourse K will have, so it sounds like that will actually be reducing capacity at the airport? Odd, given the goals…
What’s interesting about the new Concourse K is that the gates won’t be some new “flagship” facility for long haul flights. Quite to the contrary, the new concourse will have six gates for narrow body aircraft. Three of those gates will eventually be convertible to international gates, though still only for narrow body aircraft.
I’m curious to see what airline ends up getting access to these new gates. I wonder if we’ll just see airlines with a small presence at the airport randomly assigned to Concourse K (like those coming from Concourse G), or if this could enable growth for Delta or United, by giving them a dedicated, modern facility. It goes without saying that this is so far from American’s Concourse D & E facility, that it won’t be the oneworld carrier flying from there.
What’s disappointing is that there’s no mention of the new concourse having any lounge capacity. It could be that it’s just not being announced yet, though I hope that there are plans for more lounge space. It’s also not clear if Concourse K will be connected airside to Concourse H & J, or if it’ll have a fully separate security checkpoint.
Bottom line
Miami International Airport has formally approved plans for Concourse K. The new concourse is expected to open in the spring of 2029, and will be located at the far end of the airport, past Concourse H & J. It’ll boast six gates, though exclusively for narrow body aircraft. Only time will tell what airlines end up operating from here, though I guess we have several years before that has to be finalized.
What do you make of plans for the new Concourse K at MIA?
Nice to see *something* new (anything) coming to MIA. The airport design is just awful (though I vaguely recall it being even worse before the current version of concourse D was built), cramped where it should be spacious, sprawling in all the wrong ways, a depressing large-scale primitive experience for visitors.
Watch them assign Spirit to this prime new real estate lol
MIA exists to make LAX look good
Another great opportunity for the Perputal Corruption Pit of Indulgence known as MIA. (HT to Holly Hegeman).
Modernization in Action is a real project?! I just thought it was a fancy way of saying "this moving sidewalk is permanently out of order."
One thing that should probably be clarified (at least based on the marketing designs they show) is that the new concourse will be able to handle widebodies and likely will be marked for them, but they'll block at least two gates if more than two widebodies are at the terminal.
Again, based on what they're showing, it can concurrently service 6 narrowbodies, or 3 widebodies + 1 narrow, or lower combinations of the latter.
Six whole gates, huh? Wow. What an innovation. The question remains as to why they'd be adding new flavours when they can't even get vanilla right?
I’ll never understand the MIA hate. Sure, it’s a terrible airport. But it’s so much better than DFW or CLT.
@ brandote -- Agree on CLT, disagree on DFW. At least at DFW, all the terminals are connected airside, and one of the terminals is nice. That's more than can be said about MIA!
What? MIA and CLT are not horrible airports. I enjoy them and they are easy to get around. Well CLT was before the construction and based on the UA portion of Concourse A, it will be once completed.
@Ben fair enough, but I think terminal D at DFW gets too much credit for being “nice”….nicer, yes. I think what makes an airport good is too heavily weighted on passenger experience. E.g., everyone hates on Miami but Miami has great accessibility to downtown and Miami Beach (DFW does not). LAX has a terrible curbside situation, but the airfield has four parallel runways and nearly perfect weather year round (LAX is never given credit for...
@Ben fair enough, but I think terminal D at DFW gets too much credit for being “nice”….nicer, yes. I think what makes an airport good is too heavily weighted on passenger experience. E.g., everyone hates on Miami but Miami has great accessibility to downtown and Miami Beach (DFW does not). LAX has a terrible curbside situation, but the airfield has four parallel runways and nearly perfect weather year round (LAX is never given credit for this). So yeah terminal D is nice and you’ll prob spend a lot of time there due to terrible Dallas weather and a generally shitty AA operation.
Ben,
Since you mentioned Concourse K will be replacing Concourse G, it seems there will be no additional capacity to additional passenger volume. Or will they knock down the existing Concourse G and replace it with something new?
@ Waynaro -- Yeah, Concourse G actually has more gates than Concourse K will have, so I'm a bit confused there as well. Does anyone know what's going on, because that's potentially a significant reduction in capacity. Given the goal of 77 million passengers per year, how exactly is that supposed to be achieved?
@Ben @Waynaro - As far as I know, Concourse G at MIA is rarely used for its full capacity. Very few airlines operate out of that concourse, and they can easily be reacommodated in other concourses with the current setup. Its essentially the concourse for airlines who can't find space in other concourses at MIA.
I am curious whether they rebuild something else in that space though, and I assume that will be the case once Concourse K is finished.
I would prefer it if they invested in some moving walkways in concourse D. Honestly, that would be the #1 thing AA should do to improve (my) customer experience.
Moving walkways are a thing of the past in airports. They create a wall between the concourse and retail operations. The terminal operators hate them because of this
@ Nate -- Yep, as pointed out by 305, it's no coincidence that moving walkways are becoming less common. They're not good for business, and airports are shopping malls that just happen to have gates.
Seems like a lot of effort and investment for six gates, narrow-body at that… space must be really tight for this to be worth it.
Oh, great. Yet another concourse miles away from the perpetually non-working moving walkways heading to the even more distant tram to the rental car center that is for all intents and purposes located in Doral. MIA is one of the least convenient and poorly maintained airports in the U.S.
How about getting skytrain to fully work at all Terminal D stations!!!
Maybe, just maybe by 2039.