Among the first things travelers notice on arriving in the United States through Salt Lake City's new international passenger terminal are the rules.
Snappy blue signs warn against the importation of fruits, meats, plants, soil, birds and eggs. Other placards announce the penalties for assaulting a federal officer.After a stop at immigration and then customs comes the airy atrium that Salt Lake International Airport workers already have dubbed the "meeter-greeter lobby." The handsome, circular area is "where Mom and Dad can meet Johnny when he gets home from his mission," said Kevin Robins, the engineer supervising the project.
Robins on Tuesday afternoon was overseeing last-minute touch-ups during busy but unpublicized activities.
Built to handle traffic from outside the United States, the $11.1 million terminal quietly received its inaugural flight a few hours later - a Miami Air charter returning to Utah directly from Puerto Vallerta, Mexico, before continuing on to Boise.
No fanfare marked the occasion, possibly because the facility is an uncomfortable step or two before its time. Airport administrators have raised a few eyebrows for building the terminal at a time when no regular international flights will even use it.
Its defenders say, however, that it is as much a symbol of service to come as service that exists. Footings were in place in 1994 when Salt Lake City learned it had lost its bid to win one of two nonstop routes to London awarded by the federal government.
Construction proceeded, however, with an eye on predictions that the airport will continue to host a traffic surge that in recent years has ranked it second only to Las Vegas in the rate of domestic-flight growth.
Airport Authority board members, since losing the London effort, have hired an East Coast consultant to coach them on how better to lure true international traffic to Salt Lake City. Flights from foreign soil today are limited largely to seasonal charters from Mexico and daily service from Calgary and Edmonton, though passengers on the Canadian flights generally are "pre-cleared" by authorities and require no formal check upon arriving in Utah.
Administrators are quick to note the international-arrivals terminal is part of a $18.5 million, 166,000-square-foot addition that includes a now-busy terminal that houses SkyWest Airlines, which moved in five months ago and handles about 70 regional flights a day at the airport.
The international-arrival facility replaces a relatively shabby one Robins says was "woefully undersized." It is served by gate D-2 at the north end of the airport's passenger terminals in a concourse that is configured to let as many as seven gates be handled by immigration and customs officers in the new building.
The international-arrivals terminal has plenty of room to expand. Space exists for processing up to 800 passengers an hour, though the area currently is equipped to serve no more than a quarter of that volume.
If the layout of the facility is reminiscent of international terminals elsewhere, Robins said arriving passengers will happily note the distance from the plane to the baggage area.
"One of the really nice features here compared with, say, L.A. International, is that they only have to walk 200 feet or so before they're into the processing area."