Commercial aviation has progressed significantly since the first flight by Orville Wright that took place on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It’s hard to imagine travelling over long distances domestically and internationally without using airplanes that need to be operated from airports and airfields, especially with the time constraints that the modern life style imposes on us.
To be able to understand how many people use the services of airports daily, let’s go back a few years to the year of 2009, a year after an economic recession that threatened to thoroughly change the global economy. In 2009 alone, airlines carried about 2.9 billion people and 38 million tonnes of freight on scheduled services worldwide. In addition, Passenger traffic is expected to grow at an average rate of 4.8% per year through the year 2036, and most of that growth will occur in developing countries such as India and China [1]. The growing demand for the services of air- carriers clearly has economic benefits on airports that are used by those air-carriers. In the US alone, 490 commercial airports supported 10.5 million jobs, and created revenues of $365 billion in the year of 2012 [2]. The top-ten busiest airports in the world face volumes of traffic between 60-90 million passengers a year [3].
Besides the positive economic impacts, airports and air travel have negative influence on its surroundings too, such as noise pollution and GHG emissions, known as “negative externalities” by economists [4]. These impacts’ mitigation is slowly integrated into many airports’ operations and management strategies. Some airports started involving local communities (stakeholders) creating a participatory planning process that is supposed to take the interest of most stakeholders into account. Representatives that serve in those committees can be residents from neighboring communities living next to an airport, professionals from the business sector, and officials from city municipalities nearby. Those committees enable airport authorities to get feedback from the communities where they are located. YVR Airport in Vancouver is a good example [5].
In this blog I will try to go in depth as much as I can about many different aspects of airport management and operations. The next post will present an airside arena analysis
In the meantime, just to get the impression of how complex to manage airports are, let’s go back to the year of 1964, and watch what Heathrow airport in London looked like back then:
References:
- ICAO. (2010). Aviation Outlook – ICAO Environmental Report.
- Airport Council International – North America. (2012). The Economic Impact of Commercial Airports in 2010.
- Airport Council International – Statistics for 2013.
- Gossling, S., & Upham, P. (2009). Climate Change and Aviation. London: Earthscan.
- YVR Airport Environmental Management – http://www.yvr.ca/en/community-environment/environmental-management/accountability-community.aspx
Airportonomy 