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Winging It: The big overhaul

Terminal construction proves Phila. thrives, with comfort-friendly upgrades.

Travelers who use Philadelphia International Airport often complain that construction there never seems to stop. In fact, they're right, and these days we should be happy that's the case.

The snazzy new security checkpoint that opened Dec. 30, serving Terminals D and E, says to me: This place is thriving, with passenger counts that have climbed sharply over the last five years. And unlike numerous airports around the country, Philadelphia isn't suffering from deep cuts in flights and passengers as airlines try to survive the recession.

When Southwest Airlines started service here in 2004, it prompted the airport to launch a $300 million overhaul of D and E, comparable to what was done for US Airways and carriers in the other terminals from the late 1990s through 2003.

The construction walls you still see in the Terminal D and E ticketing lobbies and baggage-claim facilities hide work that is part of the big overhaul, acting aviation director Mark Gale told me last week.

By the end of this year, some of the walls should come down to reveal a new combined D-E baggage area, with nine carousels replacing the total of seven that are jammed into separate facilities now, Gale said.

Also scheduled for completion this year will be something you're unlikely ever to see: a large new ground-level area behind the ticket counters where the Transportation Security Administration will feed checked bags through high-speed explosive-detection equipment. Similar machines already operate out of sight in the other terminals.

Construction of the bag-screening area and other changes on the ground level of D and E provide a way to move ticket counters back about 15 feet, Gale pointed out. Those ticketing lobbies now can get so congested that lines stretch out the doors. It will take until the end of next year to make those improvements, he said.

In my travels, I have noticed that the airports that seem to be most popular with passengers usually have wide corridors, walls of glass, and lots of light.

Those design aspects weren't really examined in the 2008 J.D. Power & Associates survey that ranked Philadelphia first for customer satisfaction among 18 large U.S. airports. The airport did well in the survey because travelers liked more mundane things, such as accessibility, ease of check-in and security, and food and retail choices.

But I would be willing to bet that creation of the B-C airport mall and the opening of A-East, the international concourse, have had a positive psychological effect on how travelers view the airport.

The new corridor just beyond the D-E checkpoint will help, too. Besides 10 new retail shops and eateries, what was one of the airport's dullest walkways is now a spacious, light-filled mini-mall. You can now stroll from the A-West concourse to the end of E without going through security a second time.

Even more attractive, when it is finished in about a year, will be the end of Terminal E, Gale said he believed. Southwest is spending $45 million (part of that $300 million total) to add seven gates, fanning out from a rotunda with high ceilings and skylights, similar to the one at the end of the A-East concourse.

Philadelphia International cannot do much about the width of its concourses. But already in Terminal E, the main corridor is less congested because Southwest's gates and some concessions were shifted around after Delta Air Lines moved out more than a year ago.

Over the next few years, the airport construction zone will move east. Plans call for renovating Terminal F, used by US Airways Express flights, and building a new baggage-claim building under the F parking garage and next to the other baggage facilities.

And I almost forgot: If US Airways really does expand its international schedule, as it says it wants to, yet more of those construction walls will go up in Terminal A-West, at the other end of the airport.

Two weeks ago, the column looked at the chances airfares would fall this year because the recession is dampening demand for business and leisure travel alike.

Since then, Southwest and AirTran Airways have been offering deep discounts for domestic travel through the spring and into the summer, and other carriers have matched them on routes where they compete.

Fares do not appear to have gone down much for trips to Europe out of Philadelphia. But they have declined a little from other parts of the country, and prices here could still follow them down.

If you are among those who can still afford a vacation this year, remember to continuously monitor multiple travel Web sites, both those that sell all airlines' tickets and the sites each carrier maintains. You still might snare a bargain.