Written by Michael Lewis on March 11, 2026
Advertisement
Miami can’t afford to put on standby the launch of a new airport. It’s already well past takeoff time.
Booming Miami International Airport, our lifeline, will be flying at 90% of capacity in four years and be maxed out by 2038, based on current growth. If we got going today and everything fell into place, the earliest we could open an airport to relieve passenger and cargo needs would be 2038.
So, we haven’t got a day to spare.
The estimates are from a 63-page report that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and her team unveiled last week to meet a 2024 commission request for a path toward a new commercial airport. Her report is clear, cogent and persuasive.
Economically, the report details a tremendous impact from an added airport that we would be leaving on the table if we allowed MIA to max out without adding a supplemental airport. The study found the opportunity cost of inaction would be 75,700 jobs and $11.5 billion in business revenue in 2050, rising to 306,000 jobs and $47.7 billion in business revenue by 2075.
To put that into perspective, the entire economic impact of Tampa International Airport in 2022 was 82,100 jobs and $11.3 billion. We would be forfeiting that level of impact by not adding an airport here by 2050.
As for inaction’s impact by 2075, that would about equal the 309,900 jobs and $41.4 billion economic impact of Orlando International Airport in 2022. What would Orlando be without that – and what would Miami forfeit by leaving those jobs and economic impact on the table?
If you want to discount potential losses for hyperbole (and I didn’t see much of that in the report) cut figures down by half or even two-thirds. Even diminished, the failure to act now would approach catastrophic.
Not that creating a new airport would be anything but a heavy lift. The difficulties occupy a good slice of the mayor’s report. But failure to try would hamstring future Miamians without putting up a real fight.
Among key issues with which the county must grapple in adding a commercial airport are both nimbyism and political and business greed. Lots of us would rather not live near a commercial airport, and others will want to place the airport for their own benefits above community needs. Some may even want, for their own purposes, to look beyond the three sites the mayor’s study recommended: Miami Executive Airport, Miami Homestead General Aviation Airport, or a site between the two. Selflessness hasn’t always been our strong point.
That leads to a pivotal question: Are we functional enough to say yes to a new airport and follow through to get it as quickly as possible?
We’d have to navigate special interests. At last week’s commission meeting, Raquel Regalado pointed out correctly that past county efforts to add a commercial airport had crashed because government hadn’t brought to planning talks Miami-Dade’s vast business community that handles the cargo that planes carry. Their needs were never taken into account – like how to get cargo out of a plane at one airport and into a connecting flight at another airport. What ground transportation and time would be involved?
The commission last week fast-tracked a follow-up report from the mayor that’s due in 90 days, skipping a committee hearing to get to full commission action. While that will save a day of debate, it will also miss a formal hearing at which the public can speak and commissioners debate their own concerns. Representative democracy is messy, but it’s what we signed up for. We skip a public hearing to our own peril.
Among issues debated in a committee could be environmental perils, urban growth, traffic, competing uses for the 5,000 or more acres an airport would use, whether an airport the county already owns in the Everglades would be better suited for planes than its current use as Alligator Alcatraz for immigration, a potential need the report cites to decommission a general aviation airport that could interfere with the airspace of a new airport, and any rebuttals to the report’s findings.
The addition of an airport is once in a lifetime. We are convinced of need. But officials should be open to persuasion.
It will, after all, involve a lot of billions, not just in economic impact but in outlay. The process isn’t far enough along to know how much costs could be or who would help pay them. Even if state and federal governments were receptive, it’s too early to ask for funds. Nor have we come far enough to look at private investment.
Yes, there will be a lot of tricky moving parts. But we do know that our 1928-vintage Miami International Airport can’t hold out much longer as our sole air connection.
The county is absolutely right: we can’t afford to sit on the sidelines like a passenger waiting for a delayed flight. We’re already late to the party.