Long-term growth in traffic: a challenge for European airports

Citation

(2005), "Long-term growth in traffic: a challenge for European airports", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 77 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2005.12777cab.006

Long-term growth in traffic: a challenge for European airports

Keywords: Airports, Europe

If traffic demand keeps growing at 4.3 per cent a year, airports will severely constrain traffic growth by 2025, according to the “Challenges to Growth” study released recently by EUROCONTROL, in co-operation with the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC).

With demand for flights expected to grow by a factor of up to 2.5 by 2025, a potential 3.7 million flights per annum will not be accommodated, even if the capacity of the airport network increases by 60 per cent. This is explained by the fact that 75 per cent of European airports see no possibility for building new runways in the next 20 years. Only limited capacity increases will be possible owing to physical site and infrastructure limitations, environmental issues and physical constraints related to surrounding airspace and geography. As a result, more than 60 airports will be congested and the top 20 European airports will be saturated at least 8-10h a day.

“This scenario is further supported by the new EUROCONTROL long-term forecast that predicts the weakest growth to be in the North Atlantic, as airport capacity restrictions at hubs are likely to outweigh the increased number of flights that could be created by transatlantic deregulation”, says David Marsh, Head of STATFOR, EUROCONTROL's statistics and forecast service. “Over the last 6 years, the top 10 European airports have maintained their share of traffic at about 24 per cent. In the long term, this dominance is expected to decline, owing to faster expansion elsewhere in Europe, particularly at the medium-sized airports and as airport constraints begin to bite.”

The strongest growth is forecast to be in eastern Europe, for example, with traffic in Romania tripling by 2025 in the highest-growth scenario; traffic to Asia is forecast to grow by up to 6.8 per cent per annum, mainly because of China's strong growth.

The “Challenges to Growth” study reveals that on an average, 30 per cent of the existing airport capacity remains unused at today's typical peak hour traffic levels. Under the highest-growth scenario (4.3 per cent annual increase in demand), even with the implementation of maximum achievable capacity enhancements as reported by airports, this situation is expected to gradually deteriorate into a major capacity imbalance, with a shortage in some parts of the airport network and surplus in others. As a result, extra flights will only be possible at secondary airports, generally at less favourable times. There will also be strong pressure to accelerate the switch to larger aircraft, in order to accommodate more passengers while keeping the number of flights constant. In this way, the study reports, it could be possible to find capacity for up to 2.6 of the 3.7 million unaccommodated flights.

The “Challenges to Growth” study updates the ECAC-EUROCONTROL study on “Constraints to Growth” published in 2001. It is based inter alia on a new long term demand forecast and updated airport capacity projections.

“The study sheds light on the bottlenecks European air transport will face in the future. As such, it will be essential in supporting the development of the European ATM Master Plan to secure the long-term and sustainable viability of Europe's ATM system”, says Mr Víctor M. Aguado, Director General of EUROCONTROL. “Air transport is a major engine for growth in Europe. That is why it is important for demand for air travel to be backed up by the appropriate air traffic management infrastructure and why we need to ensure that we can find cost-effective solutions to help airports meet the capacity challenge in the short-, medium- and long-term.”