Effective airport master plans

Anyone who has worked at a few airports has probably had cause to ask something along the lines of "who on earth thought building that there was a good idea?”

For many airports, especially for the vast majority that are smaller than the relatively large few, there can be pressing business reasons for making a swift decision to capture an immediate opportunity. The concession owner, inevitably, has a fixed horizon with planning and investment decisions that must make financial sense within that timescale, rather than what might be optimum over the extended long term. The smaller airport may also lack a depth of planning experience, and management can be left somewhat exposed to an eventually regretted decision.

In time, those decisions can come back to bite, and not all large airports are free from examples of inappropriate planning either. By contrast, well planned airports are notable for their evident infrastructural logic, their ability to respond to their inevitably changing marketplace, and a portfolio of flexible developments that can be brought forward to best match those changing conditions. It comes down to how well the airport has been planned: its master plan.