McGhee Tyson Airport will kick off long construction period in 2024. Here's what to know

As McGhee Tyson Airport rounds out a year of record growth in air service and passenger traffic, its leaders are looking ahead to 2024, when it will kick off a period of major construction that could last as many as eight years.

Passengers will begin to see changes in February, when the airport plans to close its long-term parking lot to begin work on a new $180 million, six-story parking garage, the largest construction project in the airport's history. A parking garage next to the lot will be unaffected during construction.

Economy lots, including one opened earlier this year, will compensate for the lost space and new signs will tighten traffic rules. The lots are a short walk or shuttle ride from the other side of the nearby Airport Hilton.

Expected to open in 2026, the new garage is the first phase of a long-term plan to expand the airport's terminal building. It might not look like much is happening at the long-term lot until workers move utilities in April and begin laying a foundation as early as May.

Once the garage is complete, McGhee Tyson will embark on a project to build six new terminal gates, which could last between 2026 and 2029 and propel the airport into its next era.

The terminal building was completed in 2000 and designed to serve up to 2.6 million passengers annually. With a projected 2.7 million passengers, 2023 is set to break a traffic record and push the building to its limits.

“We’re trying to rehab a house that we’re living in,” said Patrick Wilson, president of the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority. “We can’t really just come in and do a fast-paced project on a clean site or demolish the current facilities and then reconstruct them, because we’ve got to continue to serve the community and the public at the same time that we’re building around them.”

October was the busiest month in the airport's history with 287,204 passengers, and was the eighth consecutive month of record traffic.

Between January and October, the airport served more than 2.3 million passengers, a 13% increase over the same time period last year. This year has resumed the growth the airport saw between 2017 and 2019, before the pandemic ground the aviation industry to a brief halt.

In May, American Airlines added a new daily nonstop service from Knoxville to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. In another sign of growth, several of the airport's existing services were switched to larger planes, said Becky Huckaby, the airport's vice president of public relations. Total seats on American Airlines flights from Knoxville alone have risen 30% in 2023.

Now, the airport is bracing for a tricky period of construction that will shift the passenger experience but make more room for growing demand. Beyond the new garage and terminal expansion, the airport might tear down its current three-story parking garage sometime in the early 2030s.

“This is all phased so that we’re not impacting everything all at once,” Huckaby said. “We’re trying to focus on how to really communicate how to navigate the airport at each part of these phases.”

Pickup at Knoxville airport is changing

Family and friends might be used to waiting at curbs along McGhee Place and Terminal Loop Drive to pick up passengers, but the airport said curbside traffic can stretch almost to Alcoa Highway on busy days. Beginning in 2024, drivers will need to wait in an expanded cell phone lot until their passengers are ready to hop into the car outside the main building.

At its December board meeting, the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority approved a contract with Messer Construction for up to $125,000 to add signs and designate a new cell phone lot next to the Airport Hilton where people can wait until a passenger contacts them.

The airport's current cell phone lot, adjacent to the long-term surface parking lot, can only hold up to 15 cars, said Brian White, vice president of engineering and planning at the airport. The new cell phone lot will hold just under 100 cars.

In February, new signs along the terminal roads will read, "No parking. No waiting. Active loading only," White said. The airport expects the new cell phone lot will open around the same time.

Traffic changes will come as McGhee Tyson hovers near full capacity in its long-term and short-term parking. Economy parking lots tend to have more space. The airport displays live parking availability on its website.

Knoxville airport growth reflects state and local growth

McGhee Tyson might be benefitting from the fast growth of Knoxville and East Tennessee.

The South, a 16-state region between Texas and Florida for U.S. Census purposes, is the fastest growing region in the country, and Knox County is among the fastest growing places, according to a report from the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research.

In its latest annual report to the governor, the center said Knox County was the second-fastest-growing county in the state and had the highest growth in new business filings, up 111% between the 2017-18 and 2022-23 fiscal years. Both kinds of growth affect McGhee Tyson, which serves business and pleasure flyers.

“We’ve been able to expand our staff and add some key positions in order to prepare us to continue to grow and meet the demand," Wilson, the airport's president, said.

Between 2021 and 2022, the state added 81,000 residents and had its highest rate of net domestic migration, which measures people moving in relative to people moving out, ever recorded in a single year, the report said. Domestic migration was driven largely by people moving to the Volunteer State from Florida and California.

Of the 27 nonstop destinations served by McGhee Tyson, 16 are in the South region. Half of those are to Florida, the nation's fastest growing state.

Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com.

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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: McGhee Tyson Airport to begin new garage in 2024 to meet record demand