Matthew wrote this week a glowing review of the gorgeous new Pittsburgh International Airport terminal, and visitors may be impressed; locals see massive issues.
The New Terminal
When Pittsburgh International Airport opened in 1992, it’s X-terminal design meant that US Airways travelers would never have to cross more than the length of two concourses to connect flights. This was a huge advantage for the former hub’s 20MM annual passengers at its height. But US Airways and Pittsburgh as a hub are both long gone and not coming back, so new leadership reduced its gate count from 75 (many of which were no longer utilized) to 51. All of those gates were eliminated on the southern half of the X moving the terminal from a separated out building connected by an underground train to a new building attached to the gates.
The gates and concourses were not vastly upgraded though there were some changes along with new merchants, and restaurants. It is a stunning building to be in with world-class design for some aspects (baggage claim, the check-in hall, and routing pickups, drop-offs, and other transportation on different floors. Visually, the terminal is undeniably impressive – especially for visitors like Matthew who wrote about the airport this week – but for regular flyers to and from PIT, there are some flaws both small and large that don’t make sense given the scale of the overhaul, time, and budget.
Security Is Worse Than Before
Prior to the change, Pittsburgh operated a dated security model with a very narrow path and a terrible CLEAR setup. There were two checkpoints, one that was purpose built at the terminal entrance, and another across the back of the check-in hall that was temporary in parts and insufficient without a doubt.
Somehow, it’s now worse.
The first complaint is for the newly added carry-on luggage scanning system using Analogic machines. This is the one where you get shouted at by the TSA staff to not pull the bin yet to place your things in, and then get yelled out for not doing it quickly enough. And then you stand there for an indeterminable amount of time that’s always too long until your bin is magically rolled forward and idly reviewed while you catch them rolling down the line and tripping over people waiting at the front for a bag that’s 30 behind yours.
But that’s not the complaint.
Every time I have flown from PIT in the morning (think 6-8am) there is a line that lines the new entrance and then 90° angles to extend the length of the terminal in front of check-in counters. Not only is this a few hundred people long, it also requires those who would like to check-in to awkwardly cross the security picket line amidst a group of mostly sleeping-while-standing casual passengers and convincing them that you’re not cutting, you’re trying to check a bag or go to the Pre-check line instead.
Granted, that’s for “normal” travelers and not the elitist TSA Pre-check approved channel (both the touchless and touching version) and a better setup for CLEAR. But even the TSA Pre-check line at least feels as though it’s longer and slower. That could be a result of the infuriating baggage scanning which was not present before, but on a purely objective basis, I have to arrive earlier to flights than before and have less time to spend in the terminal. That shouldn’t be the case on a clean sheet terminal design.
Parking Should Be Better, It’s Not
Parking used to be a mix of fantastic, ok, and utterly useless. For short trips, frequent travelers could park in a garage at the old terminal and with the exception of the holidays, I could snag a spot for $20 something daily. From entering the airport to parked to terminal was maybe five minutes. For “long term parking”, it was harder to find a spot, it ran about $15-18/day (now well over that) but benefited from moving walkways to the terminal and was still pretty fast, about 10 minutes to find a spot and 7 minutes the terminal doors from there. Economy was nearly Siberia and $8/day and one would have to budget 20-35 minutes in total.
The new terminal has a new parking garage and despite the price approaching $40/day, it’s fuller than ever before. It has those fun little green indicators which show the rows that have open spaces but in my experience (and that of other annoyed Pittsburgh flyers I discussed this with) also found that they do not work as intended so even more time is wasted.
The airport sent out a survey a few months before opening asking for memorable names for the parking garage floors (like Disney has Buzz Lightyear 44) to help guests remember where they parked. Following significant deliberation, they settled on Robotics Row (2), Steel City (3), City of Bridges (4), and City of Champions (5.) Perhaps their time could have been better spent on practical design rather than catchy (or not) mnemonics.
Instead of walking straight across to the terminal in a climate controlled environment, it’s farther away (even if slightly) but requires travelers to enter an elevator, drop down to the ground floor, walk all the way past every rental counter – then walk outside to the bottom of the terminal, and back up an escalator to the terminal check-in hall. It’s more expensive, less time efficient, and requires you to go outside in the winter in Pittsburgh – it’s entirely unnecessary.
Rental cars aren’t easier than before either.
Functionality Issues and Design Flaws
Once through the incredibly poor security checkpoint, a charming yellow bridge which is a hallmark of the city of bridges, funnels all travelers to the original X-terminal but at an elevated level. The intentional design was to route passengers that have collected their bags along a football-field sized security apparatus and then push them all through a bridge that is roughly 12 feet (by eyesight) wide. Once across, travelers then split left and right for just a couple of elevators, or three escalators all of which have a line at peak times and in half of my experiences over the summer, at least one such escalator is inoperable. The terminal creates a series of elegant chokepoints which reduce efficiency even more than the pair of subway trains they replace. How is this possible?
While we are on the topic of odd elevation issues, moving from the terminal to baggage claim requires ascending somewhere between 6-8 steps or taking an elevator that maybe brings travelers up four feet. The thing that makes this so odd is that following this area you pass briefly through automated doorways to baggage claim and the distance is such that a very low grade ramped floor would have done the trick, eliminated the need for the elevator entirely and just made sense.
And while not directly related to the terminal rebuild, in the massive budget they couldn’t carve out enough to replace the antiquated moving walkways that were inoperable for at least a month between trips I took.
Over Budget By A Lot
The Allegheny County Airport Authority (ACAA) announced the project in September 2017 with a price tag of $1.1 billion. By the time crews broke ground in October 2021 the number climbed to $1.39 billion, by the fall of 2023 it was $1.57 billion, and in April 2025 the authority raised the budget again to $1.7 billion. That’s $600 million above the original ask, an overrun of about 55%, and the board was still approving money to wrap up construction a month after passengers started using the building last fall.
This project pales in comparison to other major airport rebuilds around the country like New York LaGuardia, JFK, Chicago O’Hare, Washington Dulles, Dallas Fort/Worth, and Miami International. If Chicago’s price tag went from $8bn to $12.4bn (which could happen) eyebrows would and should be raised. It’s common knowledge that massive public projects like this go over budget (to the point it’s curious why an initial budget is ever taken seriously at all.) But this isn’t Chicago, the land was available so construction crews didn’t have space constraints of of the other major airports above, the challenges were far smaller and the discipline for staying on budget and including everything was not a serious endeavor.
Final Thoughts
As a part-time Yinzer (Pittsburgher), I’m glad visitors enjoy the new terminal and on occasional visits, it probably feels modern, bright, and impressive. But for regulars, it feels like the engineering team didn’t put any practical tests to the new model. The parking garage is worse despite the new build and greater technology to help travelers find spots. The first time I used the rental car facility was sub 10 degrees outside and why a new build requires travelers to not only walk outside to reach the terminal but also walk crossing traffic to do it is again, odd at best. The bag scanners are more a federal annoyance than Pittsburgh execution, but the standard TSA line is mind boggling – a simple simulation should have had them back at the drawing board. Even in soft open executions, one would have thought designers would see they have a problem and fix it. They have not at least since late July. Whomever has the maintenance contract for moving walkways and escalators should be fired for failure to perform – if they can be reached in retirement at their private island – as should the person continuing to renew that contract. If it’s been included in the new terminal roll out it’s no less than half a year behind schedule and how it hadn’t been crammed into the new budget, or the revision, or the second revision, or the third revision, I will never understand. Giving up on solving the elevation challenges, putting people literally out in the cold, charging around 20% more to park in a garage where it’s now harder than it ever was before, farther than it ever was before is just total disregard for frequent flyers from the area.
An update to PIT was absolutely needed, and it was smart to condense rather than expand the airport. The terminal is unquestionably beautiful and for some aspects, much improved. But there are so many practical holes in this design it’s a wonder that no one caught them, and more importantly to regularly PIT flyers, will the airport do something about them?
What happened to the dumpy Hyatt Regency that was attached to the old terminal? When I last stayed there in 2023, it was probably the worst Hyatt Regency in the USA outside the even worse Hyatt Regency in Rochester, New York.
It’s still there -just no longer attached…now it requires a shuttle!