New Jet Bridges Land At Tulsa International Airport

NewsOn6.com

TULSA, Oklahoma -- The renovation project at Tulsa International Airport has taken a leap forward, with the arrival of six new jet bridges.

The bridges are the enclosed structures that allow passengers to travel between planes and the terminal without going outside.

According to the Tulsa International Airport marketing department, five are being installed on concourse B and one on A.  The cost of the contract is $3,180,284.

Each bridge is a three-tunnel design, meaning it has three pieces that slide in and out of each other to bridge the gap between the plane and the building.

Once TIA's concourse renovation is complete, every gate will have jet bridge access.

TIA's marketing department says four jet bridges are being installed in the coming weeks on Concourse B and one on A:

-three on the west side, south end for Southwest Airlines.

-one on the east side, south end for United.

-one on concourse A, (gate 28 for Delta which currently does not have a bridge or direct access to the apron).

The bridges will be ready for passenger use by late June.

The sixth bridge will be installed toward the end of the year in the north end of B at the future home of United/Continental.

TIA says it will be awarding another contract for two more jet bridges in the coming months. Both will be installed in the north end of concourse B toward the end of the year at the future location of United/Continental.

TIA says both Southwest and Delta asked for additional bridges after the contract for the first six had already been awarded.

The airport owns the new jet bridges, which were built by ThyssenKrup Airport Systems in Texas, but the airlines own the old ones.

The airport authority says a contractor has been hired to dismantle and remove the old bridges in early July.

No one's sure the exact age of the bridges since they are owned by the airlines and were installed at different times.

Some of the bridges were used at other airports before they were installed in Tulsa.

The authority says it's safe to say many of the bridges are at least 25 years old.