Airnode
Brandon Hall and Brian Vargo

Airlines transport 800 million passengers annually within the US. Yet despite this scale, the industry has become increasingly congested, expensive, and inefficient, posting a $63 billion deficit within the past decade. Perhaps the conventional airport typology should be supplemented by a more adaptable system, the AIRNODE.

We propose to rescale the conventional ‘airport’ into a mobile AIRNODE, a new infrastructural typology that uses the potential created by the US highway system. By repurposing existing highways into shared runways, the industry can alleviate congestion, form more efficient routes, and respond to changing customer demands.