The initial cost was to be 1.7 BILLION dollars but by the time they were done it cost $4.8 BILLION - obscenely over budget.
The DIA is the largest international airport on US soil...Nearly twice as big as Dallas.
Words used to describe the DIA were "buried in technical problems", "poor project management", "overwhelming complexity" and "America's most inconvenient airport".
It was built in a high wind area (Stapleton Airport hadn't been) that causes it to be shut down or flights delayed often.
Even though the area is basically flat (it's in a valley), they moved 110 million cubic yards of earth around. This is about 1/3rd of the amount of earth they moved when they dug out the Panama Canal.
The airport has a fiber optic communications core made of 5,300 miles of cable. That's longer than the Nile River. That's from New York City to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The airport also has 11,365 miles of copper cable communications network.
The fueling system can pump 1,000 gallons of jet fuel per minute through a 28-mile network of pipes. There are six fuel hold tanks that each hold 2.73 million gallons of jet fuel. This is somewhere in the "no one will ever ever need this much" range.
Granite was imported from all over the world - Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America - and used in making the main terminal floor. This is a ridiculous expense, especially when you're already over budget.
The huge, main terminal is Jeppesen Terminal, also known as the "Great Hall" is 900 feet by 210 feet. This is over 1.5 million square feet of space. All told, there is over 6 million square feet of public space at DIA.The airport brags that they have room to build another terminal and two more concourses and could serve 100 million passengers a year. The airport flew 36 million in 2001.
The only way to get to the other two concourses/terminals from the Great Hall, or vice versa, is via the airport's train system.
There are more than 19 miles (30 km) of conveyor belt track, luggage transport cars and road in their own underground tunnels that move baggage and goods. They're so huge you can drive trucks through them, and some remain unused.
