[tennis1400]

Originally Posted by Chris from N.O.

I get that, but the buildings you are talking about also create more revenue. This plan basically replicates airport capacity.

If you look at the pdf from nola.com, it projects that under the "no-build" alternative, which I assume is not the same as "refurbishment", the cost per enplaned passenger would be $7.50 at the end of the study timeframe, and $6 if the north alternative comes to fruition. I know some of the money is supposed to come from grants, and I'm not opposed to accepting federal money, but do we really want to spend $450 million on a new building just to cut costs 20%? What kind of ROI is that?

For reference, we had about 4.2 million enplanements last year. Current CPE is $9- so it cost us 36.2 million this year by this metric. Let's say by 2020 we have 20% more air traffic- that would be 5.04 mill pax. So we can either have the cost of (5.04*7.50)= $37.8 million, or (5.04 *6)= $30.24 Million- a savings of 7 million a year.

That's obviously some pretty fuzzy math, but it gives some idea of the magnitude of these projected savings.

Like I said, I actually do like the proposal, I just want to make sure we're not shooting ourselves in the foot.

Your making the mistake of assuming the cost to maintain the current building will stay the same as it is today. That is incorrect because as the building ages the cost to maintain will increase even further.