Atlanta airport's Concourse D extension offers a 'glimpse' of the future

Starting Thursday, travelers assigned to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport gates D32-36 are in for a big surprise.

Concourse D has historically been the airport’s narrowest, most cramped concourse with low ceilings. And many of its gates remain that way.

But gates D32-36 now have high ceilings, large windows, extensive charging capability at seats and gleaming, large bathrooms.

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Frankly, they feel like a different airport.

And they are just “a glimpse of what’s to come on Concourse D,” Frank Rucker, the airport’s senior deputy general manager of infrastructure, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

The $1.4 billion project, led by the airport and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, promises to completely remake the concourse in the world’s busiest airport using modular construction — in order to strategically limit how many gates are out of commission at once.

Gates D16-18 already opened with the new layout because they were a part of construction of the new Delta Sky Club.

Gates D32-36 are the largest part of the new Concourse D to open to the public yet. More gates are scheduled to finish by next summer — hopefully in time for the World Cup.

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The complete expansion is scheduled to be finished during the summer of 2029.

The concourse, which was built in 1980 to serve smaller regional jets, “just begged for wideness,” Rucker said. The project will grow the concourse about 40 feet in width and allow it to accommodate larger planes.

The process is akin to “doing open heart surgery while the patient was awake on the table, still landing planes, still doing operations while at the same time widening Concourse D,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said at a ribbon cutting Wednesday.

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Indeed, passengers walking to D32-36 will pass through the next phase of the project actively underway.

Behind white walls are some of the more than 330 men and women who are working on site on the project daily, CEO of Holder Construction Beth Lowry said.

Other parts of the newly widened concourse have functioning gates but remain in “warehouse” condition with incomplete fixtures.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

The team has built 10 modules on a construction site on the edge of the airfield and rolled them into place across runways overnight. Many more are left to go, Lowry said.

“This is the future of aviation and this is happening in our hometown,” she said.

Rucker said the changes at Concourse D could be a precursor to what could be to come at the airport’s other older concourses A, B and C, which also date back more than four decades. E was built in the 1990s and also is due for renovations, he noted.

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Airport General Manager Ricky Smith said the project is about “proving that we can reimagine how the world’s busiest airport grows faster, smarter and with the passenger experience at the center of attention.”

“By 2029 this entire concourse will be transformed, and this moment will be remembered as the point where the future of Concourse D became real,” he said.