DIA at sunset. The airport has been open 15 years now. DIA Photo.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

Denver International Airport turned 15 years old over the weekend. A milestone for sure for a facility that had a difficult time in development and construction, and that many critics even predicted never would open or would go belly-up financially within 18 months.

Instead, today it is one of Colorado’s primary economic engines and, locally, a driver for growth. Have you driven up U.S. 85, Tower Road, 104th Avenue or any of the other northeast metro arterials in Adams County? The airport area not only rivals but outstrips the rest of the metro area in expansion of residential and commercial development.

I remember folks in Adams County in the mid-‘80s saying they would get stuck with the noise and the traffic but few of the benefits. It didn’t turn out that way. It’s now among the hottest markets in metro Denver.

With more than $20 billion a year in impact on the economy, DIA is a “category killer” catalyst.

For me, however, there’s an impact of DIA that is more meaningful for metro fliers, and it shows how wrong the critics were about costs. Despite all the fear and loathing that the massive costs of this monster halfway out to Kansas would propel ticket prices out of reach for families and business fliers, here’s the fact: The average air fare out of Denver is lower now than when the airport opened, according to U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

In fact, of the top 85 airports in the nation, Denver had the second-largest decline in air fares over that 15-year period. DIA is the source, and the return of Southwest Airlines to the stable of carriers is the reason.

It is supremely ironic that expensive DIA would be the reason we have lower air fares than when we left inexpensive Stapleton behind. But everything is market-driven.

Southwest never would have returned to Denver without the new airport – a notion that would have seemed counterintuitive 15 years ago when all the discussion was its supposed high costs. It was going to cost airlines an average of $16 per passenger, nearly three times that of Stapleton! But in fact Southwest abandoned low-cost Stapleton in 1985 after operating out of subleased gates there for a short time. The reason?

The overcrowded airfield limited Stapleton to one jet arrival runway during bad-weather restrictions. It choked operations to the extent that Southwest couldn’t keep its schedule-driven system running effectively. The low-fare airline determined that 70 percent of its total flight delays nationwide could be traced to problems getting in and out of Stapleton. So it pulled out, despite Stapleton’s low $6 per passenger average cost.

Now it is back, and it is keeping Denver air fares low and contributing to DIA’s status as fifth busiest airport in the nation and 10th in the world. Not bad for a facility once called “Peña’s Folly” because of Mayor Federico Peña’s incessant push for it. Critics who mimicked the attacks on Mayor Ben Stapleton in 1929 for building what had been dubbed “Stapleton’s Folly” should have remembered that it really didn’t turn out so well for those earlier critics either.

To mark the 15th anniversary of DIA, it is more than appropriate to take a brief look back and a longer look ahead at some of the controversial changes that may be coming with the new master plan.

So what made the news about it? Cupcakes.

Seriously. The lead story on 9News’ 10 p.m. newscast the day after the anniversary was a 9 Wants to Know investigation into the cost of the airport marking the event by giving out cupcakes to passengers and visitors, and building a full-size mock-up of a Boeing 787 wing in the terminal. The new jumbo-craft being rolled out by Boeing plays a major role in DIA’s targeted goal of increasing overseas flights, especially to Asia.

Where is Paula Woodward when we need her?

All airports have marketing. It’s a cost of doing business. And a nice bit of refreshment for passengers like a cupcake is more in-touch with today’s marketing than speechifying at a press conference. But instead of a piece on DIA at 15, 9News told us how some of the workers who assembled the wing model had been told to charge their overtime to the snow plowing account.

Scandal, right?

No.

It turns out the next day after the report, we discover the workers actually were on call-in for snow plow duty, and while on the clock waiting for snow, were assigned to help assemble the model. That’s a good thing, not a bad one. The 9News follow-up to its own story called it “accounted for properly.”

That’s the way the cupcake, and gotcha journalism, sometimes crumbles.

Heavy-rail self-propelled electric-powered commuter rail cars are the vehicles chosen for the FasTracks East Corridor and Gold Line projects. Courtesy RTD.

Prendergast gave a comprehensive look at DIA as a teenager, what its impact has been and the controversy over changes in the master plan that will fundamentally alter the way we initially plotted the airport’s growth.

Getting DIA built was no cupcake, but it has become a huge economic pie.

When you get the time, read Prendergast’s piece here. It’s well done and the only major correction I would offer is that the FasTracks train that will be built out to DIA is not light rail, but a heavy-rail commuter train line using Electric Multiple Units. We need to introduce the Denver public to the fact that the north metro rail lines in FasTracks will not be the smaller light-rail trolley-type cars but inter-city type train cars for a more comfortable trip to the airport.

As usual with a Westword piece, it’s lengthy. Have a cupcake or two while you read it.