Written by Michael Lewis on March 25, 2026
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We’ve been focusing on potential locations as Miami-Dade crafts a flight plan toward a second county airport that is to be larger than Miami International Airport in area and one day in activity, but many other questions factor into complex growth aims.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava reported this month on the feasibility of adding a major airport, pinpointing three potential sites. But her follow-up report due in June must get far beyond site selection. Assuming that a second commercial airport gets off the runway, plans must show how it would interact with Miami International.
We don’t see how it would work without letting passengers quickly and easily get from a plane landing at one airport to a plane departing from the other.
County officials will need to detail what numbers of passengers make such shifts today. If plane changes can’t be avoided, passengers must have fast and sure local transit between airports. That trip will have to be low or no cost, and it needs to be written into airport plans from the get-go.
Such connectivity could include rail or a dedicated busway, costly service that would use right of way the county doesn’t own now. Urban air mobility might also work.
Also due depth study is freight. As Commissioner Raquel Regalado noted at a meeting that touched on the mayor’s report, a large and complex industry in Miami-Dade that deals with all facets of freight should weigh in on any needs to transfer cargo arriving on one flight to an outbound flight or to warehouses, trucks or rail. If two airports don’t sync, what would that do to air freight?
The last time Miami-Dade envisioned a second commercial airport, it targeted Homestead to handle cargo, leaving Miami International for passengers. But as an industry veteran told me after the mayor issued her report, most passenger flights also carry freight, so segregating a freight airport from a passenger airport would fail.
How would a second airport deal with cargo, particularly since all three targeted sites are far south of Doral, where the trade community clusters?
It might be early, but how have airlines reacted to the mayor’s plan since she unveiled it this month? Reactions are vital for multiple reasons. Not only do airlines provide the flights that would make a new airport go, but fees that the airport tenants pay and whose uses they oversee would fund part of the cost of a second airport.
Another possible division of use between the airports could see one focus on international flights and the other on domestic.
But with the hub-and-spoke system of air carriers, Miami operates as a hub for American Airlines, which does about two-thirds of all passenger business here and has both domestic and international flights. A large percentage of American passengers are likely to transfer from an incoming domestic flight to outbound international or from an incoming international flight to domestic. That’s best done in the shortest possible distance between the two. An airport plan will require input on what the airlines want in that interchange.
In his book “The Geography of Transport Systems,” John-Paul Rodrigue notes that two major airports can function together in a major metropolitan area. He mentioned the relationship between newer Houston-Hobby and older George Bush Houston Intercontinental, saying newer airports typically offer lower landing and parking fees to airlines and are more entrepreneurial in recruiting new airline service.
But the relationship between Miami International and a new or upgraded major airport might not permit more entrepreneurial growth at the second airport if both are run by the same Miami-Dade County Aviation Department.
While an added airport couldn’t be ready to function before 2038, the mayor’s report says, it’s not too early to outline an operating structure for the new as well as the old – is it to be one operator or two? That answer is mostly political, but it can bleed into the economics and thus the viability of a new airport.
There won’t be a new airport, however, without both state and federal fund contributions, which will be pivotal. The mayor’s report doesn’t have dollar signs in it, and there’s no way any airport plan should go ahead without both cost and revenue estimates and sources, but it’s clear that non-local government funds must be involved.
That government money, like the choice of airport governance, would be both an economic and a political concern.
The flow of funds would depend on both state and federal budgets and political relations with the county. Good relations would be needed to start seeking approvals and funding now and they would have to stay good for at least 15 years to avoid seeing funds disappear, just as $200 million in state money that was vital to build the county’s Coastal Link rail line evaporated last year.
New aviation capacity will be pivotal for the years ahead, and we need to start creating it now. But responsible county officials won’t issue the boarding call until they know just what we’re trying to board.