I'm so old that I still think of the Moon Township airport on Bell's Farm as the new airport with the movie theater and the observation deck. What's now the Allegheny County Airport was the airport back in my day. :-)
By the way, the current Pittsburgh International Airport is an example of "if you build it, they won't come". It's my understanding that many of the corridors and concourses have been seal off due to lack of air traffic there. Is my perception correct? It's based on a trip that took me to the airport about 5 years ago and I noticed it was far from busy.
The PIA is the slowest airport I’ve ever seen, and every time I travel, it seems to be getting worse. . Someone once told me that this is due to an excessively high gate tax that our Democrat county commish has levied on each airline, causing them to discontinue their flights one by one. Its certainly not for lack of travelers - every time I fly, it seems like the flights are full. There’s just so few flights available because the airlines are penalized by our greedy, tax-happy politicians.
Disgusting.
The airport is at about fifteen percent of capacity. It was built for USAir’s dreams and when they fell the county got stuck with morthage payments and no hub airline. 9/11 didn’t help either.
Now the hope is that fracking on the property will help lower gate fees to encourage more business.