William P. Hobby Airport

[Andrew Ewert]

My experience with Hobby has felt worse each time I've flown out of it recently (which I do ~10-15 times a year). I'm sure some of it is pandemic staffing etc, but the food options are meager and for anything take-and-go that isn't Subway, you'll be waiting 20 minutes to get something. And then you won't be able to find space at a table. I've mostly stopped trying to eat at Hobby at all. Additionally, with every gate servicing a flight round the clock, there's almost never enough places to sit while you wait for your flight.

I will give them that their operations are always extremely smooth, usually very on time, and getting around the airport isn't hard. But the experience of the time spent there is less than stellar and desperately in need of upgrade.

[samagon]

my only issue ever with Hobby is the situation for dropping off and picking up.

the drop off area isn't covered which becomes an issue in the rain.

the pickup area being designed for many lanes to be accessible to pick up passengers, but then they have most of them blocked off for either ride share, or remote parking. it's just not good at all with how they have everything closed off.

[Houston19514]

From United Airlines (by way of a poster on another forum):

"B Terminal
Did you think construction was over?

Work is underway to determine what we do with the B terminal moving forward when compared to the aircraft sizes we will be flying with United Next. We expect to have some definitive answers by the end of the year. This includes a full look at both North and South as well as the B Lobby, BMU, TSA screening, etc."

"The traffic under the new Early Bag System building will open by November 1st, which will give back the lanes of traffic to south terminal road. Once that is opened up, the airport can then begin to build the structure for the new lobby. Completion for E is still slated for 2024."

[ehbowen]

On 8/16/2022 at 10:39 AM, X.R. said:

Have been flying out of Hobby lately and its honestly much better than it was even 5 years ago. Good amount of store fronts, decent food options, and my god is their Clear/TSA Pre lines efficient. From parking to gate, it was 16 mins. I'm sort of proud of where Hobby is right now, its a fine airport that can really get people in and out. Only complaint is the baggage area that is from 1950, and the lack of efficiency there [its a bit slow] stands out when compared to the rest of the airport. 

We did IAH early this year, and it was miserable. Construction pains is an issue, and understandable, but getting through their security line seemed like much more of a hassle. Plus, it just feels...sterile. 

The baggage claim area is NOT from 1950. Believe me; I remember the 1954 baggage claim area! It was completely redone in the '90s; the bag carts behind the scenes now use a path which used to be the ground level access road when the terminal was new!

The 1954 bag claim (which was extended, but not changed, about 1980) had no belts or conveyors. There was just a line of roll-up doors behind an upper and a lower shelf. The tug would pull the carts in, the driver would roll up the doors, and then stack the bags wherever he could find an open space on the shelves. Mob scene ensued...

[mattyt36]

1 hour ago, ehbowen said:

The baggage claim area is NOT from 1950. Believe me; I remember the 1954 baggage claim area! It was completely redone in the '90s; the bag carts behind the scenes now use a path which used to be the ground level access road when the terminal was new!

The 1954 bag claim (which was extended, but not changed, about 1980) had no belts or conveyors. There was just a line of roll-up doors behind an upper and a lower shelf. The tug would pull the carts in, the driver would roll up the doors, and then stack the bags wherever he could find an open space on the shelves. Mob scene ensued...

Yes, that's correct . . . the bag claim area is not original to the terminal.  In fact, weren't the bag belts and the ticket counters on the same level when the terminal originally opened?

This old terminal map from 1968 isn't much help in clarifying, but there is only one level.  Maybe a second level was added at some point, as was the case at many airports.  (Note from map KLM served HOU before IAH opened . . . KL's first service to Houston was in 1957, AMS-YUL-HOU-MEX DC-7.)

HOU68 (departedflights.com)

This photo does show a dual-level roadway in 1976.  I don't think the airport had a garage until the 1980s.

[ehbowen]

42 minutes ago, mattyt36 said:

Yes, that's correct . . . the bag claim area is not original to the terminal.  In fact, weren't the bag belts and the ticket counters on the same level when the terminal originally opened?

This old terminal map from 1968 isn't much help in clarifying, but there is only one level.  Maybe a second level was added at some point, as was the case at many airports.  (Note from map KLM served HOU before IAH opened . . . KL's first service to Houston was in 1957, AMS-YUL-HOU-MEX DC-7.)

HOU68 (departedflights.com)

This photo does show a dual-level roadway in 1976.  I don't think the airport had a garage until the 1980s.

In the 1968 map the stairway down to baggage claim was located behind the Continental ticket counter. The other stairway opposite Fleetway Air Taxi would have led down there as well. Bag claim itself was located under the Eastern and Trans Texas gates on the 1968 map. The street level exit from baggage claim was just behind the dark taxi with the white roof which looks like a Dodge Polara, second from left. The grated openings to the right of it in the photo are for the boiler/chiller/mechanical room. To the right of that looks to be airport/airline offices. Subsequent to the printing of that map (IAH was already well under construction) a customs/immigration wing opened to the right (west) of the concourse to gates 1-6; it was briefly used by Braniff International as they tried to compete against Southwest to Dallas after the terminal reopened in the early 1970s. They quickly gave up and moved back to IAH.

This photo does not show what used to be a matched pair of ramps leading from the parking area up to the ticketing level, with a bridge over the lower roadway. One of the ramps had been cut for some mechanical installation (probably a sump pump) by the mid/late 1970s but the other was intact until construction began on the garage and new bag claim in the 1980s.

One feature that not many Houstonians know about Hobby Airport is that when it opened it had twelve actual hotel rooms which I believe were located on that lower level...there weren't many other places to stay if you had an overnight connection in 1954! (The old Houston Municipal terminal which is now the Museum had two of them, and they were still intact although badly decayed when I worked at Hobby from 1997-99.) Shortly thereafter, though, airport hotels opened up on Telephone Road and across Airport Boulevard and the City chose not to give them competition. I heard that at least one of the hotel rooms was intact (as an office, with a private toilet and bathtub!) while I was working there, but I never got a chance to see it.

Edited November 22, 2022 by ehbowen

[mattyt36]

15 minutes ago, ehbowen said:

In the 1968 map the stairway down to baggage claim was located behind the Continental ticket counter. The other stairway opposite Fleetway Air Taxi would have led down there as well. Bag claim itself was located under the Eastern and Trans Texas gates on the 1968 map. The street level exit from baggage claim was just behind the dark taxi with the white roof which looks like a Dodge Polara, second from left. The grated openings to the right of it in the photo are for the boiler/chiller/mechanical room. To the right of that looks to be airport/airline offices. Subsequent to the printing of that map (IAH was already well under construction) a customs/immigration wing opened to the right (west) of the concourse to gates 1-6; it was briefly used by Braniff International as they tried to compete against Southwest to Dallas after the terminal reopened in the early 1970s. They quickly gave up and moved back to IAH.

This photo does not show what used to be a matched pair of ramps leading from the parking area up to the ticketing level, with a bridge over the lower roadway. One of the ramps had been cut for some mechanical installation (probably a sump pump) by the mid/late 1970s but the other was intact until construction began on the garage and new bag claim in the 1980s.

Wow!  Thanks for all the detail!

15 minutes ago, ehbowen said:

One feature that not many Houstonians know about Hobby Airport is that when it opened it had twelve actual hotel rooms which I believe were located on that lower level...there weren't many other places to stay if you had an overnight connection in 1954! (The old Houston Municipal terminal which is now the Museum had two of them, and they were still intact although badly decayed when I worked at Hobby from 1997-99.) Shortly thereafter, though, airport hotels opened up on Telephone Road and across Airport Boulevard and the City chose not to give them competition. I heard that at least one of the hotel rooms was intact (as an office, with a private toilet and bathtub!) while I was working there, but I never got a chance to see it.

This I definitely did not know and I find fascinating--there are some office suites to the east of the AA bag service office down the corridor with restrooms, maybe that was where they are?

[ehbowen]

1 hour ago, mattyt36 said:

Wow!  Thanks for all the detail!

This I definitely did not know and I find fascinating--there are some office suites to the east of the AA bag service office down the corridor with restrooms, maybe that was where they are?

Hmm. Thinking about it, if I was building a hotel room I'd want to give it a window, and aside from the public space windows for the lobby and concourses the only windows I see (in the original building...gates 13-19 were a later addition) are on the ramp side of where the Pan American desk is, as you can see in this publicity shot from 1980 which I just unearthed after 40+ years in the filing cabinet. (Hmm. I've only had that filing cabinet since the '90s!):

As you can see, at the time the apron area between (old) concourses A & B was still being used for parking, and a flight school (Fletcher Aviation, later moved to the South Ramp) was in operation at the end of Concourse A.

Other little tidbits of trivia from an Intrepid Amateur Industrial Archaeologist:

The Dobbs House restaurant in the circular area was also, during the '50s-'60s, the airline catering kitchen. (It may have been supplanted in the later years before the move to IAH.) The kitchen was on the ground level, the dining area was on the ticketing level, and on the mezzanine level was the "Cloud Room" with a scenic balcony walkway which you can see on the photo above. Stairs led up from the cloud room to the actual airport roof, and in fact there were also stairs which you can just barely make out from the ticketing lobby to the roofs of the gate concourses. I'm old enough to remember going up on those roofs to watch my Dad's flight arrive; there were even boxes where you could put in headphones and drop in a nickel to hear the radio chatter. Thank you ever so much, TSA....

The Cloud Room was served by a dumbwaiter which connected it and the dining room with the kitchen. This dumbwaiter was out of service when I started exploring in the late '70s and was never returned to operation. The restaurant was in fact closed until after the terminal fully reopened in the late 1980s; when it did reopen the hot food was carried up to the ticket lobby level in a small passenger elevator which was installed in the ticket lobby adjacent to Concourse B. The Cloud Room was never again used as a restaurant to the best of my knowledge but it did continue to serve as an executive board room until the present Southwest Airlines concourse was constructed in the 2000s.

Concourses A and B had underground service tunnels which ran the length of each concourse, with a transverse tunnel which connected them. It could get mighty dark and drippy in there. Concourse C, which was added later, did not have this feature.

The Customs & Immigration area which was built in the 1960s and which served for a brief time as Braniff's gate in the early 1970s is the one-story rectangular addition just west of the main terminal building in the photo above.

The two (wheelchair? Naah, no one was handicapped in the 1950s...) ramps from the parking area to the ticket level are just barely visible in the photo above; the small bridge which connects them to the ticket lobby casts that black shadow in the center. You can see that the east ramp has been cut for a sump pump or similar, but the west ramp was still intact.

More later....

[Andrew Ewert]

Has this been mentioned here? This is GREAT news, and sorely needed.

https://www.papercitymag.com/restaurants/hobby-airport-adds-new-restaurants-food-hall-rustic-velvet-taco/?amp

Quote

With more than 17,000 square feet of restaurant space to play with, LaTrelle’s, the Houston-based hospitality group that owns and operates franchised and licensed restaurants in major airports across the nation, has secured a $334 million contract with the City of Houston to renovate and revitalize the airport’s core dining options with construction starting later this year. LaTrelle’s has tapped a bevy of beloved Houston restaurants to take up residence there. New additions include Common Bond, The Rustic, Velvet Taco, Dish Society, Pinks Pizza and Fat Cat Creamery, which join established neighbors Peet’s Coffee, Jersey Mike’s, Wendy’s and Dunkin’.

 

[IntheKnowHouston]

From Houston Chronicle today:

"With Pappas Restaurants (Pappas BBQ, Pappadeaux, and Pappasito's) set to lose its footprint at Hobby Airport, the company's chief executive officer went to City Hall on Tuesday to question the selection process for the contract, which he argued was flawed.

City Council will consider giving a 10-year, $470 million contract to Areas, a subsidiary of the Spain-based Areas SAU, at its Wednesday meeting, ending Pappas' run in the airport. The lucrative deal comes after the city has been seeking airport proposals for three years, including three separate rounds of bidding, an unusually protracted process to award a contract."

 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/pappas-losing-hobby-airport-contract-17796680.php

[hbg.50]

Yeah, I wasn't too happy with the Dallas-area restaurants coming in but I guess it makes sense given the large presence of Southwest and numerous flights from DAL.

[Pleak]

Round-tripped through Hobby last week.   Had not flown out of that airport in about 17 years or so.  It's a lot nicer than it was back then.

But the roads around it - especially around the parking lots - don't think any repairs have been made since I was last there.

Even as a kid - I remember about being bounced out of the car going there.    Just odd that a major gateway to Houston has such a rough welcome to visitors.

[ChannelTwoNews]

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/03/29/southwest-airlines-hobby-airport-expansion-plans.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_27&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s

"Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) is working on the planning and design phase for its $250 million expansion at William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) following a memorandum of agreement that was approved by Houston City Council a year ago.

Jonathan Massey, principal aviation sector leader for Dallas-based Corgan, provided updates on the project during the city’s March 29 economic development committee meeting. Corgan is the architectural firm providing services to Southwest, and Massey said the expansion will affect three areas of the facility: the west concourse, the baggage claim area and the behind-the-scenes baggage system.

The first part of the project will be expanding the west concourse, which Southwest opened in 2015. Currently, Southwest serves five international-capable gates, meaning they can be used for domestic or international arrivals. With the expansion, seven gates will be added to the existing facility. Of those seven, two will be international-capable gates.

Massey said this expansion will allow the airport to have more opportunities to provide travelers with amenities, such as concessions, before their flights. With the building of the seven additional gates, Massey said there is also an opportunity to add two more gates at the end of the building in the future. However, the potential future gates would only come to fruition if there's enough demand."

[Houston19514]

Construction is expected to start early 2024.  FWIW, the other parts of the project are:

• complete redo of the baggage claim hall with added belts (and potentially a raised ceiling with natural lighting)
• Added baggage processing capacity, including construction of an addition to the complex.

[cougarpad]

This is where I think Jet Blue made a bad decision to move go IAH where they also have Spirit and Frontier. Jet Blue should created a hub at Hobby where the longterm plans for the airport and there is room for a East Wing to Hobby in addition to the West Wing. There have been masterplans documents on the Houston Airport Website forn an East Expansion. Jet Blue has their semi hub where they fly to the North East routes, Florida routes, and LA from Austin. Having Austin strategically does not make since as a hub. Your three big business centers our Houston, Dallas, and I'll add San Antonio, but the only reason a person woudl fly in Austin is for government jobs or tourism which does not lead to a heavy ridership. If JetBlue had moved their spoke hub flights out of Austin and invested in a East Terminal being built at Hobby they would get much better bang for their buck and they would increase business from flyers going from the East Coat routes to Houston for business which is a big cash cow for most airlines added in the tourism flights from Texas to Florida and LA.

I aslo think for way to long that Southwest has been aloud to have a stranglehold on Hobby which along with United stranglehold on IAH causes Houston to be one of the highest air fairs to a major city in the US to fly into domestically. 

 

 Jet Blue has the opportunity by moving their spoke hub from Austin and investing in Hobby and making a statement to Soutwest and United that they want to be a major player in Texas and specifically Houston to show they can compete domestically at the level of United and Soutwest. Their is room for an East Terminal at Hobby and I know also that Hobby is working long term to reconfigure and add anothe legit runway to take in ad send off 737s. Southwest might have Hobby as their Airport in Houston but their actuall home base airport is Dallas Lovr Field. Jet Blue can make Hobby their home base. Just looking at Jet Blues route map in and out of Austin they can move those flights over to Hobby by investing. Southwest has paid alot to the City of Houston to get what they want, but every one has seen and knows about the heavy money Jet Blue has spent in New York for a big beautiful Terminal, so the airline has the money and pockets for paying the City of Houston and getting majorly in at Hobby Airport. Instead of having their other competitors in Frontier and Spirit with them at IAH, it woudl just be Jet Blue and Southwest at Hobby with just the small amount of commuter flights for American Eagle and Delta to their hubs in Dallas and Atlanta. If Dallas can have American and Southwest as there major airlines. Then surely Houston can counter with United, Southwest, and Jet Blue. To me it has never made any sense that the the 4th largest city in the US and a heavy business city with oil and gas and other industries has only two major airlines using their two airports as Hubs. If Chicago and New York have all the major airlines using their airlines as hubs then Houston should fight and entice for it two airports to be hubs for United, Southwest, and Jet Blue. I will add that I would like to see Delta and a few flights to Salt Lake City which is their West US HUB in the US. It never seems right that Delta flies to Atlanta to the east for their connection to hub but doesn't fly out of Hobby to their HUB in the west. AA has their home hub in Dallas so they only need those connector flights. Delta to compete with the hub routes of AA should start flying connectors to Salt Lake City to the west. The reconfiguration and resurfacing to add the additional runway at Hobby need to get going and completed.

[Houston19514]

Austin is far more than just government jobs and tourism. Government jobs and tourism are not causing the construction of all those skyscrapers that have been going up in Austin, not to mention the giant Tesla facility etc etc etc.

From what I can tell, it looks like Jet Blue serves two destinations from AUS (JFK and BOS).  

• AUS-JFK: 4 flights/day
• AUS-BOS:  3 flights/day

That seems well short of anything like a hub.

[ChannelTwoNews]

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2023/05/04/jsx-seasonal-flight-hobby-destin-executive-airport.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_27&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s

 

"JSX, a public charter jet service based in Dallas, will soon begin seasonal flights from Houston's William P. Hobby Airport to Destin Executive Airport on the coast of the Florida panhandle to help with the influx of expected commercial air travel.

 

[ChannelTwoNews]

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/pappas-leaves-hobby-lawsuit-18089215.php

"Starting Friday, travelers passing through Hobby will see temporary eateries until the two companies can fully set up their permanent restaurants. They no longer will be able to eat at Pappadeaux, Pappas Burger, Pappasito's, Pappas Bar-B-Q or a combined location of Dunkin' and Baskin Robbins.

 

Edited May 12, 2023 by editor
Edited due to copyright. Remember to summarize and link. Don't copy and paste.

[Houston19514]

Video of last year's State of the Airports presentation.

 

 

[hindesky]

Architect - https://www.corgan.com

[hindesky]

[hindesky]

Two private jets clipped each other as one was landing and one taking off. No injuries but Hobby is closed. The one clipped it's winglets on the aft of the landing aircraft.

[hindesky]

 

[hindesky]

Architect - https://www.silhouetteinc.com

[hindesky]

Houston, we have a problem — with everyone else.

The William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas, and the newly transformed, $4 billion Terminal B in New York’s LaGuardia Airport are the only US airport properties to score five stars in Skytrax’s ratings of airports across the world.

Hobby was lauded for its “excellent customer experience,” “broad range of seat choices” and “upgraded interior décor finishes,” among other stellar amenities.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/worst-us-airports-revealed-facilities-212059298.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink

[Houston19514]

Renderings of work being done at Hobby

Edited March 7 by Houston19514

[hindesky]

A new nonstop flight to Tweed-New Haven Airport in Southern Connecticut is making its way to Houston.

Avelo, established in 2018 and based in Houston, will be the only airline connecting William P. Hobby Airport to Connecticut via a nonstop flight when the service starts June 14, a news release announced. Flights will depart twice a week on Fridays and Mondays on a Boeing Next Generation 737 aircraft.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/houston-connecticut-nonstop-flight-avelo-19351230.php