Multi-airport Systems
5.5 Planning and Developing Multi-airport Systems As the previous sections discuss, multi-airport systems are both
early 1970s, it was at around 8 million annual originating passengers. In the intervening years, aircraft became larger and airlines could handle more passengers with the same fre-quency. The interpretation of this evolution is that frequency becomes less important above some level, at which point a second airport can develop more easily. This level translates into a rising number of passengers, as the size of the aircraft increases.
Geographic considerations become more important when the importance of frequency diminishes. At some point, secondary airports receive substantial traffic because they are in fact more convenient. This effect is particularly significant when travel throughout the metropolitan region is inherently difficult. Hong Kong is a prime example of this situation.
Although both Hong Kong/Shenzhen and Hong Kong/Macao are geographically close to the primary airport at Hong Kong/Chek Lap Kok, they are actually quite distant in time because of inadequate roads for one and a long water crossing for the other.
Finally, runway limitations may impel the development of a multi-airport system. For example, the short runways at Dallas/Love Field (< 9000 ft or 2700 m) led to the develop-ment of Dallas/Fort Worth. Likewise, Buenos Aires/Ezeiza has significant traffic because the more convenient downtown airport, Buenos Aires/Aeroparque, simply does not have runways adequate to serve intercontinental aircraft. Similar situations apply to Taipei/Taoy-uan, Rio de Janeiro/Galeão, and São Paulo/Guarulhos.
5.5 Planning and Developing Multi-airport Systems
• Build flexible facilities that can serve the several different types of traffic that may develop at the second airports, in light of the experience that the airlines using these facilities come and go and each has different requirements
• Work closely with airlines that target markets distinct from those served by the primary airport and that are consequently more likely to implant themselves at the second airport (de Neufville, 1995)
These recommendations should also be useful to planners and developers of major new airports designed to replace older airports. This is because the developers of major replace-ment airports often have been unable to close down the existing airports completely. Many new large airports intended to replace the older facilities end up being second airports, at least for a while. This was the case for Osaka/Kansai, Paris/de Gaulle, and Washington/
Dulles. Airport developers should anticipate this possibility and plan accordingly.
Land Banking
This is the practice of securing land for possible future development. Properly executed, it represents a major way of implementing long-term plans for the development of new air-ports at a reasonable cost.
Land banking is a form of insurance. It protects the region from the risk of not being able to find a site for a future airport when needed. This risk comes from the fact that significant new airports require at least several square miles (or in the range of 1000 hectares) of va-cant, reasonably flat land. However, this is precisely the kind of land that is most attractive for the expansion of the city. If the region waits to acquire land until the city has grown to the point where it needs a new airport, it may well find that no convenient sites are then available. Land banking gives the region the option of building some kind of airport when needed, without requiring the region to do so.
Land banking is relatively inexpensive. It is obviously much less expensive than buying land and then also building a major airport prematurely—it avoids construction costs that are easily 10 times the price of the land. Moreover, although the initial cost of the land may be expensive in absolute terms, it can be a good long-term investment. As the metropolitan area grows, the value of the land should appreciate. If the airport never uses the land, it will be available for other purposes such as housing and industry. For example, the Australi-an federal government paid about US $100 million to acquire 1700 hectares for a possible second Sydney Airport in the late 1980s. This cost only a few percent of the estimated cost for the government’s alternative, the construction of a major new international airport. A generation later, this large block of property is worth many times its original price. From an investment perspective, this land banking was both inexpensive and profitable.
To be effective, land banking needs to maintain the option intends it to serve. Planners setting aside land for a future airport need to ensure that they will be able to develop a new airport at the site should they need to do so. They need to control local zoning and develop-ment to inhibit obstructions and ensure access. Importantly, they can develop or maintain a small airport at the existing site. This facility and its operations will be useful in maintain-ing both the principle of the airport at that site and the necessary clear zones for aircraft op-erations (asChap. 9describes). In this vein, regional planners and airport operators should try to maintain existing airports in a metropolitan region, as insurance against future needs.
For that reason the Boston airport authority, Massport, has been subsidizing the continued operation of Boston/Worcester, which otherwise might have closed due to lack of traffic.
Conversely, land banking will fail if planners do not maintain the option to develop the site as an airport. For example, the Toronto region acquired a 7500-hectare site at Pick-ering for a possible second airport. For nearly 40 years, this area has effectively been a vast nature preserve. The Pickering site may thus no longer available for a major airport.
In practice, the second Toronto airport is more likely to develop at Toronto/Hamilton, an airport that has been in continuous operation and that, as of 2012, is a major center for in-tegrated air cargo carriers.
Effective land banking often involves the maintenance and eventual recycling of military airports. Examples include Austin (Texas) and London/Stansted. Future opportunities in this line exist for Washington (Andrews Air Force Base), Tokyo (Yokota), and other cities.
Incremental Development
In developing new airports, airport operators should stage development incrementally, along with the actual traffic at the new facility. They will save money and be able to build the right facilities for the traffic that eventually occurs. Financial and operational problems arise when the airport operator constructs a first stage of development that is far too big for the traffic that actually occurs.
Airport planners should, and regularly do, plan new airports on major sites, typically much larger than the older airports. A large area gives the airport operator room to expand easily when traffic makes this desirable. A large site is a form of land banking that provides inexpensive insurance for future capacity expansion. Having the option to build large in the future is, however, very different from building large at the beginning.
Traffic generally builds up slowly at new airports, unless the airlines are compelled to move. This is primarily because it is advantageous for them to keep flights at the busy air-port. So airlines will tend to move away from the established airport slowly. The exper-ience at London/Stansted, Montreal/Mirabel, New York/Newark, and Washington/Dulles document this phenomenon. Both London/Stansted and New York/Newark, for example, had major airport passenger buildings standing empty for a decade or more. Each of these
second airports experienced far less traffic than planners expected over a long period, be-cause of the reluctance of the airlines to move to the new facilities.
Strong financial reasons reinforce the reluctance to move based on market forces. Air-lines implanted at the old airport may have major investments in hangars, maintenance fa-cilities, and other properties. They naturally resist abandoning these facilities and may find it difficult to raise the money to replace them.
Experience indicates that traffic is likely to develop slowly at a second airport. Airport operators should therefore stage development accordingly. The way the Aéroports de Paris (AdP) developed Paris/de Gaulle offers a good example of how planners can do this. It built passenger buildings in increments, each capable of handling about 10 million annu-al passengers. This incrementannu-al approach has meant that the airport has been under nearly continuous development for all this time. However, AdP anticipated this and designed the airport so that it could easily accommodate this construction without unduly disrupting on-going operations.
This incremental approach to the development of a second airport has several advant-ages. Most obviously, it defers construction of capacity until needed. Postponing the con-struction and maintenance costs for several years may effectively halve the present value of the investments. Perhaps even more important, incremental development permits the air-port operator to design each addition according to the changing needs of the airlines. Each of the increments of passenger buildings at Paris/de Gaulle has a different configuration, representing opportunities and requirements at the time of construction. The second stage (Terminals 2A and 2B) solved a difficulty with baggage handling associated with the first stage (Terminal 1), Terminals 2E and 2F enabled connections to high-speed rail service.
Terminal 2G serves domestic trips and so on. Each stage represents an important addition to earlier facilities. Overall, the incremental approach has allowed the AdP both to save money and to keep up to date.
Flexible Facilities
Because forecasts are uncertain, asChap. 3emphasizes, airport operators should build flex-ible facilities that can accommodate a range of loads and types of traffic. This recommend-ation applies especially to the development of second airports, because their traffic is par-ticularly volatile.
The traffic at second airports is variable as to both level and type of traffic. Because second airports are often bases for startup airlines, they go through boom and bust periods.
Chicago/Midway went through this as Midway Airlines grew and failed around 1990.NewYork/Newark had a similar experience when PEOPLExpress grew rapidly and then collapsed in the 1980s. In both cases, passenger traffic rebounded, although with dif-ferent airlines having difdif-ferent objectives and requirements. In other situations, the type of traffic might change significantly. At Washington/Baltimore, for instance, US Airways
pulled out most of its international flights in the 1990s. Although the growth of Southwest maintained the overall level of passengers, the empty international gates were not flexible enough to serve Southwest. The airport thus had to construct a new passenger building, an expense it could have been spared if it had built flexible facilities in the first place (see Chap. 15and ACRP, 2012).
Airport operators should therefore configure their facilities so that they can both accom-modate different types of traffic and change easily to meet different needs. San Francisco/
Oakland offers an example of how airports can do this. Their facilities have been inexpens-ive and designed to cater to domestic, international, and cargo facilities. These develop-ments are perhaps not architecturally impressive, but they have met the varying require-ments of the airlines that have come and gone from this airport over the last generation.
Careful Marketing
Airport operators should develop a careful strategy for marketing second airports to likely users. Airlines that operate at the primary airport are unlikely candidates as they normally will be reluctant to withdraw flights and weaken their position at the more important source of traffic.
Airlines or operators serving different markets are the most likely candidates for second airports. These may
• Aim at special market segments (such as Ryanair’s emphasis on cheap fares)
• Cater to particular clients (Florida bound family vacationers)
• Orient toward particular destinations (such as business service to Rome out of Mil-an/Linate) or serve a special business center (as Houston/Hobby does for the NASA Space Center and the refineries, and London/City does for the financial center)
• Provide specialized services, such as integrated cargo (as Los Angeles/Ontario and Toronto/Hamilton do for integrated cargo airlines)
To entice airline clients to secondary airports, operators should develop facilities that particularly serve their needs. Orlando/Sanford provides a good example. In the late 1990s, the private operators of this airport aimed to attract low-cost airlines catering to tourists.
They therefore made a special effort to reduce the cost of operating at that facility, partic-ularly when compared to the primary airport Orlando/International. They built inexpens-ively, managing for example to construct their parking garages for about half the cost paid by Orlando/International (seeChap. 17). They pioneered the shared use of gates between international and domestic services (seeChap. 15). In short, they had a specific marketing strategy to develop traffic at this secondary airport and built their facilities for this market.
They were then successful, too. The development strategy for Orlando/Sanford built the
traffic at this secondary airport from about 50,000 to well over 1 million annual passengers in little more than a decade.