Interesting. The IndyStar has a puff piece proclaiming the first anniversary of the opening of the grand new terminal at Indianapolis International Airport (IND). Yippee.

What Dennis Ryerson buried in all the window dressing was the bad news. Take a peek at this bit from the Lafayette Journal-Courier:

The new terminal at Indianapolis International Airport has seen a 10 percent decline in passengers during its first year.

The new terminal opened a year ago today as part of a $1.06 billion project that also included new parking facilities, roadways and other construction.

Let’s review. The new terminal is financed by publicly backed municipal bonds. The airport is paying for those bonds through airport revenues such as rents on concessions, landing fees, gate rent, passenger facility charges (that extra $7.50 on your airline ticket), and parking fees. If there are less passengers flying in or out of IND and IND is not a hub for any of the majors, ergo not receiving revenue off tickets for pass-through passengers unlike hub airports such as MDW, ORD, CVG, or MSP, then revenue to pay off the bonds used to build the airport will be down. The new terminal was sold to the public as “this won’t cost you a cent, the passengers and airlines will pay for it”. Sound familiar? Stay with me because this is where is gets interesting. If airline passenger counts don’t rebound in coming years what will become of the revenue stream anticipated when the bonds were issued? Yep. You guessed it. And guess who is on the hook for those bonds if the Indianapolis Airport Authority (IAA) can’t make the bond payments? Indianapolis property owners, that’s who.

(More below the fold)
Now, Indianapolis taxpayers, utilizing their new voice granted by the General Assembly, overwhelmingly got snookered into approved building a new Wishard hospital using bonds backed by our property taxes. However, the taxpayers were convinced this would not cost the taxpayers anything, that revenues from a shell game financing scheme of nursing homes, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, and the revenue from regular health care insurance will cover the cost of these bonds. Yet, do we really know what Pelosi and Reid will come up with for health care “reform”? Are there any guarantees from Congress that revenues to Wishard will remain the same in the coming years and not decrease as reimbursements decrease because more people will be on the government option? Where’s Andre Carson on this? Oh right. Taking after his late grandmother. Never heard from nor  seen at anything besides staged events.

If my numbers are correct, I believe a handful of carriers have left IND or cut back severely since the entire new terminal project started back in the Peterson Administration. ATA once was the largest carrier based at IND. They left IND and subsequently folded. Southwest cut back from what I recall was almost half of an entire concourse at the old terminal to just a couple gates now. Frontier is gone, bought out of bankruptcy by a contractor for the majors Republic Airways. America West is gone. I’m sure I’m missing some carriers in there that came and went. The majors have cut back on flights in the post-2001 era of air travel. At least FedEx has a package hub facility here and making numerous flights into and out of IND every weeknight.

Anyone care to guess how long before the IAA will come to the City-County Council or the Indiana General Assembly with hat in hand asking for a bailout?