wxman

Any hope that the rendering of the spire going to transition to reality? Btw, if they're having trouble filling Capitol Tower, what makes Hines think they can fill a new high rise when their new 48-story tower will likely deplete the lease-pool even more than it already is?

Can we keep it on topic? Not everybody agrees with you on SCOTUS. Thanks.

Wow, as if WTC 1 isn't uninspiring enough, they take what could have been a real AMERICAN landmark tower and turned into this piece of s**t?!?!?!?!?! ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME?!?!?!? This building has no character or imagination to it. It looks like a cheap knock off of the Georgia Pacific Tower in Atlanta. Whatever nut job came up with that needs to retire or quit. Seriously. They need to see this project as more than just office space. This needs to be a symbol of our enduring spirit of freedom and something really spectacular needs to rise here. NOT this.

Eva kicked off it's inaugural flight today on the 777-300ER Hello Kitty Livery. Tried to link to the ABC13 news story but can't figure out why HAIF won't let me paste the link. Maybe it's just my computer...

Sorry for the ignorance but what building is going up on the far left of the picture?

A380 does not work for United: CFO By: EDWARD RUSSELL CHICAGO Source: 19 hours ago United Airlines chief financial officer John Rainey says the Airbus A380 “doesn’t really work” for the airline’s network, driving its preference for smaller widebodies like the Boeing 787. “We’ve looked at that and we are looking at it right now [but] it just doesn’t really work for us,” he says on the European superjumbo in an exclusive interview with Flightglobal in Chicago today. Rainey cites a higher trip cost for the A380 compared to smaller widebodies like the 787 despite comparable per seat costs as the main challenge to adding the type to United’s fleet. Airbus is eager to land new customers for the A380, whose operators include many of the world’s blue chip airlines but none in the Americas. In addition, Emirates Airline represents more than 50% of the 155 outstanding firm orders for the aircraft with no new customers joining the programme sinceTransaero ordered four in 2012, the Ascend Fleets database shows. In addition to seeking new customers, the European airframer is now dealing with placing two “white-tail” aircraft that were bound for Japanese carrier Skymark before it cancelled its order for six in 2014. Those aircraft are unlikely to land at United. “[instead of] one flight a day and fill up an A380, we’d rather serve [a market] with a couple widebodies if the demand was there because business passengers certainly like that,” says Rainey, citing London Heathrow as a market where frequency is king on routes to the USA. United has also focused on serving primary and secondary cities abroad with nonstops from its US hubs, for example to places like Chengdu in China or Newcastle in the UK, instead of aggregating all of the traffic over a partner's hub. It also serves primary cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo with multiple frequencies from the USA. The carrier has ordered 55 787s, including 18 -8s and -9s already in its fleet and 37 outstanding orders for the -9 and -10, that allow it to serve more cities abroad nonstop as well as beef up frequency in key markets. Rainey says that the 787 is key to United’s network strategy in Asia, especially to China. In addition to the 37 787s that the airline has on order, it also has firm orders for 35 Airbus A350-1000s with deliveries from 2018 and for 10 Boeing 777-300ERs with deliveries from late 2016, Ascend shows. This outstanding widebody orders will allow United to replace the 23 ageing Boeing 747-400s in its fleet as well as some older smaller widebodies.

Update: my buddy that works for United text me this morning saying that the buzz around the office today was the A380. After asking a co-worker about it, he realized that this has been in the works for a few weeks now apparently. He didn't have specifics but was surprised by it nonetheless.

I understand that this would be out of SFO but the idea of United bringing them to Houston wouldn't be possible being that Terminal's C and E aren't capable of docking the widebody....unless they used Terminal D. Is United permitted to use D? I realize this is hypothetical. I also have a buddy who works at United (although he still says Continental because he hates United lol) and he hasn't heard of any rumor of such an order yet. Doesn't mean it isn't so. He also said that IAH has very limited international service on United (referring to European, Asian and African, NOT South America or Mexico) because Newark or SFO's location making it easier to feed passengers to those continents through there instead of Houston. He said it is not likely that international service on United will expand much at IAH--even though they did just add Munich. I just thought it was interesting and disappointing. I suppose United's lack of European and Asian destinations from IAH has allowed more foreign flag carriers than we'd otherwise have.

Almost what?

And how many floors?

WOW!!!! That would be noticeably taller than the Allison Tower. Exciting stuff for The Woodlands

It's a bit squattier than I had anticipated actually.

I forget how this works but is it 48 office floors on top of a 8 story parking garage? Or is it a 40 story office building on top of an 8 story parking garage?

That's crazy. I can't believe Pakistan and South African were both serving IAH. With any luck, we'll get South African back.

And by office tower, how tall did it appear? Similar to the Skanska development? 15 floors or so? And by office tower, how tall did it appear? Similar to the Skanska development? 15 floors or so?

So I get to work around 4 a.m. every morning. After I do what I'm supposed to do, I have a bit of down time and my mind begins to drift. So I was curious, what airlines did IAH used to serve but don't any longer? Have we lost any international carriers? The only airline I can think that no longer serve IAH is Southwest. I'm sure Northwest and AmericaWest used to serve the airport but don't now due to mergers. I suppose I'm more curious about international. Did PanAm and TWA ever fly into Houston?

Exxon said the same thing about a north Houston campus too until a million trees were cleared and 500 cranes appeared above the trees...

Love it! Since it's Fertitta money, how confident are we of this getting built? I feel pretty good about this actually. Beautiful building!!

And there's about to be 2 more with the Catalyst going up, right?

Even IF they opted to build a new airport, where in the heck would you put something that size? IAH is already inconvenient for most people who live IN Houston or God forbid Sugar Land or Clear Lake or Galveston. The amount of property you would need along with good ample transportation to get there would either push the new airport way out of town or be shrunk down considerably to something like San Diego, Philadelphia or Reagan.

Here is the rendering again. You can see they've topped out the usable floors it looks like. However, there appears to be a 5 story crown of some sort on each face of the building. I'm just guessing.

Can somebody update wikipedia on the arrival of Air New Zealand? I tried to update it but for some reason IAH is a protected page and can only be updated by certain people. I'm obviously not one of those people or I would have done it.

Deleted. Wrong thread.

Man I wish this building was going up. While it wouldn't have made any impact on the skyline, the sunken lobby area next to the street would have been a welcome addition. Seems like every building cycle there are great proposals that bite the dust. In the 80s it was most of Houston Center and BSWT. I guess it's only to be expected.

I was watching the State of the Airport speech address today on fly2houston.com and Mr. Diaz mentioned that demolition of Terminal D wouldn't even begin until 2016 and be finished "hopefully" by 2020. Am I missing something here? 4 or 5 years to build one terminal? You can build a 100 story highrise in less time. Why so long for a simple terminal building? I really hope this terminal is as modern and 'Texas' as they make it out to be. What we have now is an embarrassment to the city and the state---especially compared to DFW and Atlanta.