Minneapolis/St. Paul
Navigating the nation’s third-largest metro airport system
By Mark Huber - December 1, 2007
The collapse of the I-35 freeway bridge last August thrust Minnesota into the national spotlight and highlighted the logistical challenges of navigating the Minneapolis-St. Paul metroplex. A serpentine network of rivers and lakes divides the area, which is home to 3.5 million people. The Mississippi River serves as the natural boundary between the glass towers of the seemingly more modern Minneapolis and the grand old massive stone architecture of St. Paul, the state capital.
The region, which is interconnected by an overtaxed freeway system, includes a sprawling suburbia. (Minneapolis proper has only 372,000 residents.) Even before the bridge collapse, the area had some of the worst surface traffic in the country. But it also has the nation’s third-largest system of metropolitan airports. Generally neat, clean and well-maintained, they can take the edge off “ground-pounding” and help make visiting the area an enjoyable experience.
Most of these airports are administered under the central Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission. The Commission has drawn up ambitious expansion plans for the reliever airports and some construction has already begun, ensuring that as the region grows, its airports will, too.
Here’s a look at those airports and at the ground-support operations (FBOs) they offer.
Minneapolis-St. Paul International
Northwest Airlines is responsible for 80 percent of the traffic at this airport and ground control frequencies at peak hours are regularly clogged. Waiting on the ramp to fly out of here recently, I felt like a game-show contestant who was always a second late with the clicker as I keyed my microphone and tried to get through for nearly 20 minutes. The practice of holding traffic at the airport or at the airports of origin for inbound flights has become an almost daily occurrence.
Still, on a hot summer day with a fully loaded large Gulfstream, this is the only game in town, the only airport with long enough runways. That’s why many big local companies such as 3M base their birds here and why General Dynamics Aviation Services has an engine overhaul and major maintenance shop on the field.
The airport has other things going for it, as well: It’s across the street from the Mall of America (see box on page 62) and the commercial passenger terminal is home to Ike’s, one of the country’s best airport restaurants. (Try the walleye and chips–to die for.)
That said, if time is critical, you’d be wise to consider alternatives to this airport, which will be under perpetual construction until 2010. If you can’t go elsewhere, at least plan to arrive and depart during nonpeak hours, when delays should be minimal unless the weather turns bad, in which case all bets are off.
Signature Flight Support opened a terminal here five years ago that remains one of the nicest in the country–with all the service and amenities $6.64-a-gallon jet-A and a $525 handling fee can buy. (That fee, for a Citation X, is waived with a 400-gallon fuel purchase.) Signature’s FBO here consistently ranks among the best in the country in surveys by our sister publication, Aviation International News. In addition to all the upper-end amenities, the facility boasts 120,000 square feet of hangar space. And if you need maintenance, you’ll be glad to hear that Signature is on the same ramp as General Dynamics Aviation Services.
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