The paradox of airport expansions and climate commitments examined and challenged

THE ANALYST PERSPECTIVE - where CAPA - Centre for Aviation's analyst team provide their personal views on a hot topic facing aviation around the world.

Airport expansion, by way of additional infrastructure - terminals and runways; is it compatible with the investment into sustainable aviation fuels?

A recently published paper written by an Australian academic argues that the level of investment being made in airport expansion right now would be better spent on kick-starting nascent aviation technologies and alternative fuels.

Such technologies are hardly nascent. Alternative fuels (SAFs) have been around for more than a decade, and more ways of making them are being discovered all the time. Ditto electric and hydrogen propulsion systems, which are well established in numerous countries and getting ever closer to being trialled publicly (albeit on a small scale to begin with, and on small aircraft).

The biggest mistake the writer makes is to assume that it is governments that are throwing money at airport development in lieu of this fuels research.

Firstly, governments are spending a lot on such research, and secondly, it is mainly airports that are privately owned or leased that are spending the greatest amount of money on expansion, or they are getting private sector help to do it.

And no airport wants to operate out of a shiny 'Taj Mahal', and all the costs that go with it.

It is certainly the case that some air traffic control systems are hopelessly dated, for example in the US, and that there is an argument that some airport-related support could be retargeted there in what will ultimately be a USD30 billion + job.

But otherwise CAPA - Centre for Aviation's conclusion is that the conflation of the two issues will not help solve either of them, and that satisfying global climate goals is indeed compatible with supporting airport construction projects.