King County
King County International Airport (KCIA), also known as Boeing Field, is located in Seattle. It was established in 1928, just a short time after diversion of the Duwamish River created a flat area suitable for airplane operations. It has its own governance, noise programs and growth plans like Seattle Tacoma International Airport. On September 25, the airport hosted an open house discussion of Vision 2045, its airport plan update. In addition, their consultants and staff discussed the KCIA Part 150 process, aimed at noise reduction and mitigation strategies. Though these are two separate processes, they are happening simultaneously with the same consulting firm overseeing it, and many of the same airport staff involved in both.
Here are a few meeting highlights:
- A slide presentation with voice-over provided an introduction
- Attendees spoke with staff and consultants about various options, then shared feedback on draft concepts. Feedback is accepted until Oct 17.
- Most attendees live in the Georgetown and Beacon Hill communities. One group with a strong presence was Fix The Harm. This is a regional group involved in SeaTac, as well as Boeing Field. (They are sponsoring a candidate forum on Oct 22 in Burien, which we will write about separately.)
For more information, visit the KCIA Vision 2045 page and the KCIA Part 150 page.
One might think, “2045 is so far away”, but 20 years for an airport is like a blink of an eye. Issues they are grappling with include how to serve customers who use alternative fuel or electricity, how to manage planes that are more like helicopters, the growth of cargo, and safety upgrades, such as a taxiway that is further away from the runways.
KCIA is currently hosting Kenmore Air flights to San Juan and Orcas Islands year-round (their seaplane flights from Lake Union are seasonal), Seaport Air flights between Seattle and Portland, and extensive cargo operations. They do not have the space for a passenger airline and baggage handling services at this time, though several years ago, Southwest proposed flying from KCIA, but the lack of space for baggage was a major problem.
Pre-COVID, there was a scheduled carrier with luxury flights to Oakland and Las Vegas. Many of the sports team charters use KCIA, and they will sometimes have diversions.
Continued neighbor concerns include noise, air pollution and increased street traffic. KCIA, unlike SeaTac in its so-called Sustainable Airport Master Plan, is not proposing to pave over land that recharges aquifers, remove extensive stands of trees, and otherwise expand the area filled with airport buildings. A consultant present said there were other noise metrics besides the dNL being used to create contour maps. Unfortunately, the governing laws only allow dNL to be used, and does not include number of incidents, or “time above”.
A major question for people living in the area bounded by Beacon Hill, Des Moines, and Federal Way: What are the overall limits and capacity of flight activity? The air traffic at KCIA is only about half of what it was 18 years ago. The drop has been in general aviation flight operations.
Questions were asked to a representative at the Open House about their plans, and if they are contingent in any way on airspace capacity. As SeaTac adds flights, does that impact the number of planes that can fly in and out of KCIA? As KCIA adds more flights, especially vertical take-off planes, what impact does that have on SeaTac capacity? The response was that King County International is a separate airport, and the two airports do not jointly allocate space for planes. They do not talk about the impacts that one airport’s plans will have on the other, and they do not discuss cumulative regional impacts of airport emissions. The consultant had not heard of any entity looking into these issues. He suggested I contact the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) for cumulative impacts. In a first edition of this story, I wrote I'd not heard back from PSRC. Correction: PSRC did respond in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the email landed in my junk email folder. The representative pointed me to the 2021 report on regional airport capacity and offered to provide additional background. A future story will include additional details about regional air capacity and planning.
While it was good to be invited and to inform the community about how another airport is approaching issues of growth, technological change of aircraft, and other related topics, more information needs to be researched, and the lack of collaboration of nearby airports should be a concern.
Next meeting dates are in the spring of 2026. If you would like to submit a comment or question, comments on Vision 2045 are due by Oct 17.
Members Discussion