Councilmember Johnson delays vote on IAH fee
KHOU-11's Lee McGuire reports that Councilmember Jarvis Johnson has delayed plans to impose a $3 fee at Bush Intercontinental Airport to finance a Terminal B revamp (in partnership with Continental Airlines):
Wednesday’s planned vote to add a $3 fee to every passenger departing from Bush Intercontinental Airport has been delayed by a week.
Council member Jarvis Johnson called for the delay because he said he is still waiting for more information from the Houston Airport System regarding its plans to finance a $1.2 billion expansion of Terminal B.
Under the arrangement announced last week, the Houston Airport System would pick up roughly half of the cost of the construction, and Continental Airlines would pay for the other half. The Airport System plans to use a “passenger finance charge” for the next 10 years to raise nearly $400 million.
The last time Councilmember Johnson went poking around in Richard Vacar's territory (what, you think Council should have a say in how the Airport is run?!), he lost. Badly. And so did that company Vacar and Yellow Cab put out of business.
However, in light of this week's news of the Delta-Northwest merger, which could well trigger a Continental-United merger, it might be worth reconsidering the whole Terminal B expansion. In the current fuel-cost environment, it's hard to imagine that Continental is going to be in aggressive expansion mode. And if a merger with United goes through, it's also hard to imagine that the combined airline is going to need significantly more capacity right away at IAH. So the issue probably deserves more deliberation at Council.
I wonder how Richard Vacar will ultimately tell them to vote?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/17/08 11:04 PM | Print |
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
ADVERTISING
DISCLAIMER
All content © 2004-09, blogHOUSTON and the respective authors.
blogHOUSTON.net is powered by Nucleus.
Site design and Nucleus customization are by Kevin Whited.