Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) has set Nov. 18 as the opening date for its new $1.7 billion landside terminal.
The facility, which has been under construction for four years, aims to refashion PIT to better accommodate origin and destination (O&D) passengers. The airport handled nearly 10 million such passengers in 2024, with only around 300,000 connecting.
PIT once served as a US Airways hub. During its days as a hub, which ended in 2015, a high percentage of the airport’s passengers were connecting.
“The new PIT replaces an outmoded terminal built for a different time and purpose as a US Airways hub designed for connecting passengers,” the airport said.
The landside terminal, spanning 1.1 million ft.², will be connected to the airside terminal—where concessions and gates are located—via a covered, tube-shaped “Skybridge.” The landside terminal will house check-in, security checkpoints and baggage claim.
“Baggage delivery times are expected to be cut in half,” the airport said. “The new terminal cuts the eight miles of bag belt down to three miles and upgrades to a more efficient system.”
PIT said the new terminal will reduce the time it takes arriving international passengers to reach curbside by 67%.
PIT noted the landside terminal “streamlines the security experience into one, consolidated checkpoint with 12 Transportation Security Administration [TSA] lanes, compared to seven at the main checkpoint today, and eliminates the need for an alternate checkpoint.”
As part of the project, PIT built a new garage with 3,300 automobile parking spaces, doubling the amount of covered parking previously available at the airport. PIT has also added a new outdoor parking lot with an “approximate five-minute walk to the terminal’s front door,” the airport said.
The new landside terminal and renovations made to the airside terminal over the last several years are expected to enable the airport to handle as many 15 million annual passengers.
In preparation for the opening, “the new terminal and systems went through rigorous testing over the past several months, capped off by two large public trials with more than 2,000 participants providing input and feedback on their experience,” PIT said.
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