Any of you ever landed at SKY Harbor?
Right smack in the middle of the city. RIGHT SMACK IN THE MIDDLE.
While comming down you can look into the buildings along the airport.
That airport should be moved out of there. Gonna cost a lot I know, but someday...and it will happen.
Have you ever landed at Lindbergh Field in San Diego?
Yeah, but I think it was there first and the city grew up around it. PHX isn't nearly as bad as San Diego, a postage stamp-sized airport surrounded by hills and tall buildings. PHX is big like LAX, with multiple runways.
They could move all the airlines thirty miles southeast to an expanded Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport (Allegiant Air has a hub there now), but that would make most Valley residents pretty unhappy with the much longer drive.
Whaddya mean? It's supposed to be there! Barry Goldwater scraped out the runway hisself! The planes fly up the riverbed and over low-rent industrial and acres of freeway to get there! It's a perfect spot! No driving hundreds of miles to get to the airport!
The ballparks and office buildings an infill housing along the approach and departure corridors were built long after the airport was opened. Frankly I think people had a choice, and the choice was to accept the risk.
If you google map Sky Harbor there is nothing to the south and the E-W approaches parallel I-10 with not a lot of developed area underneath. Yes you can see downtown Phoenix to the north when you fly in. In San Diego you fly through downtown to land on runway 27.
There are airports smack dab in the middle of a lot of cities, right near me it’s LAX and John Wayne, in most cases the airports and cities grew together.