Why Houston Is Rebuilding Its Airport From Scratch

day at George Bush Intercontinental [music] Airport, and 100,000 adventures are about to take off. >> Houston is in the middle of the most expensive airport overhaul in its history, and it isn't even close. Houston is moving forward on a major redevelopment redevelopment project at Bush Intercontinental >> get ready for more construction at Bush

Airport. Today, [music] United announcing a major project. >> And just when you thought construction was done at Bush Airport, mm-mm, here we go again. [music] When an airport approaches 50 million passengers and its infrastructure can't keep up, problems aren't a matter of if, but when. That's especially true at this airport, which anchors one of the

nation's largest airline hubs and serves a region growing incredibly fast. So, how did an airport designed in the 1960s for a completely different era of flying end up carrying this much weight? And why is Houston now spending over $4 billion to fix it? To find out, I flew to Houston to see it firsthand.

>> [music] >> The airport opened in 1969 with a pretty simple idea: two compact terminals, A and B, each built around those circular concourses that were very popular at the time. It was modular, forward-looking, and built for an era when travel looked more like this. But that small, tidy layout didn't stay small for long. Over the next five

decades, the airport stretched outward into a broad five-terminal arc, forming the semicircle that most people are probably more familiar with. In in 1997, it took on a new name: George Bush Intercontinental Airport. By the mid-2000s, IAH was an entire campus. Two people mover systems tied it together. An underground train from the early days