The main focus of the TICKET LOBBY IMPROVEMENTS project was to improve comfort levels within the five existing naturally ventilated overseas terminal ticket lobbies at Honolulu International Airport. Several schemes were evaluated for cost, constructability and performance including installing central air conditioning, adding mechanical ventilation and improving natural cross ventilation.

Low speed wind tunnel testing was conducted on a 1:100 scale model of the overseas terminal building and its adjacent parking garage to determine the impact of adding canopies at the front of the lobbies, adding wind scoops on the roof and opening all existing ticket lobby windows. Historical microclimatic data was then integrated with air flow data from the wind tunnel tests using a computer program to determine the percentage of time conditions would be considered comfortable within the various areas of the ticket lobbies with and without the various proposed modifications and combinations thereof.

Study results indicated that the adding pyramidal glass canopies at the front of the ticket lobbies in combination with opening all windows on the leeward side of building would improve comfort levels within the majority of occupied spaces a significant percentage of the time. For areas that were in dead air zones, such as at the ticket counters along the back wall, ceiling fans were installed to promote air movement. The ventilation study for this project was published in “Wind Engineering into the 21st Century,” the proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Wind Engineering held in Copenhagen, Denmark in June, 1999.