Thanks for the update! Any word on if Terminal 1 will ever have a similar interior design to Terminal 2?
You’re welcome. I’m not sure about that. Terminal 2 design is pretty incredible! I’ll certainly follow up and let you know or share updates here as the work at RDU continues!
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Great to have you active here in the forum
Any info you can share or timeline on the direct flight to Beijing?
Intercontinental, I think a flight to Frankfurt or Munich could make sense as well
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FWIW — My personal preference would be Shanghai over Beijing.
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If you play with Google maps and ask for different municipalities, RDU doesn’t show as belonging to any of them. Raleigh wraps the airport primarily from its NW to its SE, while Cary has some exclaves to its NW and Morrisville comes toward the airport primarily from the SW.
That said, I think that RDU has a Morrisville address.
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RDU has a Raleigh PO Box address from zip code 27623 which only services the airport, but their actual physical address is Morrisville zip code.
Why doesn’t the runway on the east side of the terminals ever seem to need to be rebuilt or need major maintenance? The one on the west side is in dire need of being replaced yet it is actually newer. Just curious.
maybe it’s because the west runway is utilized more?
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If we were to need a new international runway we could replace that domestic asphalt one (the one your talking about) and rebuild it with concrete and extend it to support bigger flights.
Also it could be that the one on the west is concrete and the one on the east is asphalt idk if it makes a difference
Thanks, Niko! No timeline for Beijing yet…but your thoughts are well received. Clearly the interest is there!
Given the direction we are headed with Vision 2040 and our growth, it supports the need to get the new runway built to make those flights a greater possibility! No cheap task!
Kind of off subject, but speaking of cost of flights from different airports, I am going to Glasgow tomorrow departing RDU and ticket purchased 60 days ago cost me $1,800 and if I had waited to go on Saturday would have been $2,700 for same flight. Now for the amazing part. I’m going to Shanghai, departing from RDU in a couple of months and bought ticket last week on same airline.Ticket is only $498 (that’s four hundred nighty-eight). These are both round trip fares. I priced tickets out of a couple of other airports and RDU, as always, was lower by enough to make the extra drive time worthwhile, plus get to look around Raleigh some when I return.
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Interesting, read on TBJ. Story about Bill Sandifer
The chief operating officer at RDU. He said that by end of year RDU will be at around the capacity that was forecast not to be reached until 2031.
EDIT — that’s people and airplanes using airport not capacity of airport.
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I know that Morrisville handles mail for the airport
The market is flooded with capacity to East Asia from all of the Asian Airlines, particularly from China. Everybody needed to drop their prices to compete, and is far from sustainable. The crazy thing is that this has been going on for quite some time and a lot of Asian flights have been canceled by US Airlines. Off topic also, but today I just picked up some flights to Austria before Xmas, $1850 for Econ to and Business back on Xmas Eve.
I’ve been traveling to China for over 10 years and think the most I have ever paid is around $1000. Internal flights around China are around the low end of costs for internal USA flights, $200 to $500. But yea I’m guessing Chinese government is subsidizing the international flights on Chinese airlines.
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I used to fly to Beijing quite a bit and it always seemed pretty cheap to me. I remember that I once got a round trip to Hong Kong for $425.
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I’m going to Glasgow for a conference this October, too, and I also realized it’s not super expensive to go there.
Though we can probably do better.
I’ve been comparing several options, and it dawned on me that a detour to visit some friends cuts my costs in half.
Option 1 - $1200ish: fly to/from RDU-Heathrow and Heathrow-Glasgow
Option 2 - $600ish: fly RDU-Boston, crash at a friend’s for a night, then go BOS-LHR and LHR- BOS-RDU (going between London-Euston and Glasgow by train for $80ish roundtrip)
I really love the number of direct flights we have nowadays, but I hope we do better soon by having more competition.
Side note: for those of y’all like me who are frequent flyers for airlines that, unfortunately, only codeshare with the baggage-destroying, doctor-assaulting United Airlines, they’re opening a new lounge soon! …and it’ll depend on the photos they release tomorrow, but I’ll admit it: the barbecue thing sounds pretty cool.
About that runway, though...
If it’s going to support cross-continental or transatlantic flights, though, I think it still needs to be extended. That runway (5R/23L) is only 7,500 feet, so it’s not exactly ideal for larger planes needing more space to acc/decelerate.
...and the Airport operations too, while that's still in the back of our minds.
I’ve flown through Terminal 1 several times (both before and after the rebuild). When you walk anywhere inside it, you can see and feel how that renovation was done with a fraction of Terminal 2’s budget. (see @Alan and @CanesFan’s posts for more details)
Not that that’s a bad thing, though; it looks like Terminal 1 will turn into the homes for RDU’s ultra-low-cost carriers by 2020, so that’s probably more appropriate anyways.
RDU is operated by a public-ish entity that partly gets input from the City of Raleigh, though. So not only does it have secondhand impact on DTR, it also responds to inputs and pressure from the city and county too.
Hell, they even have webpages showing board meeting minutes, just like city halls.
Can we talk about airport ACCESS, too???
It’s always confused me how the airport always existed as a sort of mysterious, isolated, floating existence separate from every other transit mode in Raleigh. I wonder when we’ll have more frequent non-driving alternatives (like even more frequent than the every-30-min GoTriangle 100 buses we have now, which is apparently already an improvement??) to go to/from the airport to other places in the area and beyond…
By the way, reminder: we’ve already extensively discussed rail extensions to RDU, and why it’s a bad idea.
Rail-based transfers between RDU and Charlotte-Douglas could also be nice, too? Codeshare “flights” with trains are apparently a real thing.
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I’ve seen it as low as $390, but for a very unpleasant 27 hours of total travel time. My last flight to Shanghai out of RDU the day before Chinese New Years was only $550 rt. It’s been super cheap the last few years. Guess there are a lot of flights going there compared to somewhere like Munich.
What brings you to Austria? I fly about 3-4 times a year since it’s my home country and I work for an Austrian firm
Depending where you go you can get creative e.g. fly into Zurich, Munich and take the train/rental
On a separate note:
If you are flexible with flying times and destination you can find the best deals with google flights (explore flights) select weekend, week and just look on the map for extraordinary deals. e.g. Shanghai $446 roundtrip
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We travel a lot, but aren’t really cold weather people. We usually visit family in Brasil during the holidays, so we are taking a gamble to experience Europe during christmas time. Experience the whole Christmas atmosphere and give skiing a shot. We fly into MUC and out of VIE. So our tentative plans are a few days in Salzburg, a few days in Kitzbuhel, and end in Vienna. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
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