Evaluation of airport capacity optimization measures

The global air transport system has seen significant growth rates over recent decades. The growing wealth of many countries goes along with a substantial increase in travel needs. Global market forecasts foresee the total number of airline passengers to double within the next 20 years. Accommodating this air traffic growth is highly challenging for many airports around the world, as by now they are already facing substantial capacity constraints. Necessary airport infrastructure expansion projects cannot be realized in many cases. Therefore, a more efficient utilization of the existing infrastructure is regarded as one of the key enablers for future air traffic growth. Within this study five different airport capacity optimization measures will be analyzed by using a comparative evaluation model. The investigations of 22 international hub airports revealed that these measures can significantly contribute to an alleviation of the future congestion situation. In the best case scenario, average capacity utilization can be reduced by 48% for the year 2031, compared to the baseline scenario. However, even in this case, a relevant share of the air traffic growth cannot be accommodated. In that case, the feasibility of new airport construction projects would be highly valuable if integrated into such an analysis even though a very high uncertainty is associated with it.