The spectre of an impending congestion crisis has reappeared to haunt the air transport industry around the world, but nowhere is the capacity crunch more evident than in the crowded airports of Europe
Europe has long fretted over the need to squeeze more capacity out of its congested air transport infrastructure. In the past that has tended to focus on the bottlenecks of a fragmented air traffic service, but attention seems to have turned to the pending capacity crunch facing European airports. That, combined with the constraints being pushed by the environmental lobby, appears to be the biggest single block to meeting future demand.
Such fears are far from being confined only to Europe. As the latest figures from Airports Council International (ACI) show, passenger numbers were back last year to above the 2000 peak, aided by Asia's rapid recovery from the SARS epidemic. The recovery is already raising concerns in the USA and Japan but nowhere is the airport capacity problem more acute than in Europe, not helped by the region's growing environmental constraints.
At the end of April, the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC), which is celebrating 50 years as the region's intergovernmental air transport forum, brought stakeholders together in Edinburgh in a forum styled as a joint high-level dialogue co-hosted with the European Union (EU).
The European Commission (EC) used the opportunity to outline its consultation paper due this year on the issue of airport capacity shortages, while the Airports Council International Europe (ACI-Europe) had already launched its opening salvo with a report on funding for future infrastructure projects.
Underpinning the debate are the results of the Challenges to Growth study carried out last year by Eurocontrol, the region's air traffic management organisation. The study, an update on the joint study with ECAC three years ago, sets out a long-term traffic forecast and updated projections for airport capacity through to 2025.
The study takes four scenarios, ranging from a bullish assumption of a market characterised by strong economic growth and increasingly open global markets, through to the more bearish assumption of weak growth and increased tensions between regions with high security costs and oil prices.
Assuming no capacity constraints in either air traffic control or airports, it reckons that air traffic demand by 2025 will be some 2.5 times the level of 2003 (equivalent to 150% growth). Flights would then hit 21 million a year. Eurocontrol director general Victor Aguado points out that this translates into a fairly routine average annual growth rate of only 4.3%, something slightly below the actual experience of the previous two decades. Even the most pessimistic forecast suggests flights would rise by 1.7 times, equivalent to sluggish 2.5% annual growth rates. On present standings, airport capacity looks alarmingly unlikely to meet these numbers across the system.
Aguado estimates a long-term potential for 60% capacity growth, provided best practice is adopted across the industry, although the bulk of this comes from secondary airports where it is little needed. Only a quarter of airports report the possibility of building extra runways within the next 20 years, but 80% report they are unlikely to achieve best practice without it.
Even if the 60% rise were achieved, it would represent only a doubling of potential volumes through to 2025. On the more aggressive demand forecast, that would leave 3.7 million flights unable to take place. More than 60 airports would be congested and the top 20 saturated for at least 8-10 hours a day.
Take the example of Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, one of the least growth-constrained of Europe's major hubs. Jean-Marie Chevallier, planning director at Aeroports de Paris, points out that even with its fourth and probably final runway, due on line in November, plus work to optimise the system, its long-term target is to raise movements by only around a third. "Growth in the range of 1.5-2.5 times is clearly out of reach," adds Chevallier.
"Future growth is only possible if structural changes take place," says Aguado, pointing to the need for new infrastructure, more use of secondary airports and the unlocking of the latent capacity tied up in the system. The study identifies a need for 10 new major hubs and 15 medium-sized airports. Another 1.6 million flights could be squeezed in if carriers accepted that services could run up to 3 hours earlier or later than their optimum schedule. Another 2.6 million flights would come from transferring demand to secondary airports.
Quantum leap
Aguado is optimistic that the infrastructure can cope in the short- to medium-term but existing initiatives will not provide the "quantum leap" needed to have a chance of meeting long-term demand. That, he adds, is why Eurocontrol is working with the EC to help spur the necessary change.
The EC has stepped up to the plate with the launch of its capacity consultation paper. As air transport director Daniel Calleja concedes, the solution probably has to emerge at national and local levels, but the EC is keen to lend its weight as a catalyst to get the debate started. And it is attempting to push through the paper with some urgency, hoping to have industry feedback by mid-summer. Following that would be a stakeholder meeting and a communication by the end of the year. "It's a very ambitious timetable but the challenges are enormous and we have to act quickly," says Calleja, adding that the lack of airport capacity "has the ability to stifle growth".
Calleja argues that the now-adopted Single Skies initiative is genuinely working to resolve the long-running constraints of Europe's famously fragmented air traffic system: "We think that we've produced a system that is really going to start producing results". Now the challenge is on the ground.
Agreeing with the Eurocontrol study, Calleja stresses that there is no single solution to the shortage of available Tarmac. Rather the EC paper is looking for progress under four main headings:
* Relationships with other modes of transport
* Solutions at the individual airport
* Research and airport safety
* Relationships between airports.
On the first point, the talk is of combined air-rail infrastructure and encouraging "rail alternatives", with a plea from Calleja to stop thinking about "competition" and start looking at the "logic of complementarity and co-operation" with high-speed rail.
The second area covers a host of potential solutions at local level to encourage airports to make maximum use of their existing capacity and look at sources of prefinancing for new infrastructure. As Aguado outlines, Eurocontrol already plans to integrate the airside of airports into the air traffic management masterplan: "It's an industry system to which everyone belongs." Calleja highlights opportunities to improve planning and share best practice, as well as tackle the issue of unused slots.
Alongside the airport capacity consultation, the EC is due to bring out a discussion paper on the next phase of its controversial revision of slots regulations. Calleja says that the EC's broad view is to consider secondary trading and, in a move designed to provoke reaction, asks about the feasibility of auctioning new slots. The EC also looks approvingly at the apparent success of the Düsseldorf airport experience, where carriers effectively pay a forfeit if they leave a slot unused.
The third part of the airport capacity consultation is to look at how to help airports turn operational research into practice – an initiative backed by a proposal to set down minimum safety levels through an airport certification process. Finally, Calleja outlines the EC's thoughts on encouraging the use of spare capacity at secondary airports, while also allowing authorities more flexibility to distribute traffic within an increased number of airport systems. Both would, he adds, need to tread carefully within the bounds of European rules on competition and non-discrimination.
Infrastructure funding
However, if the European air transport industry is to pull together to tackle the long-term capacity crunch, there may first be some bridges to mend. The acrimony between airports and airlines over charges continues to rumble on, not least over the issue of finance for new infrastructure.
In its new report, ACI-Europe estimates that having already spent $19 billion since 1998, its members will spend another $55 billion on new infrastructure and facilities through to 2025. That includes new terminals at London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Madrid and Paris as well as a handful of new runways.
But the question remains as to who should pay for such projects? "Airport charges alone do not adequately enable financing of future capacity projects," warns ACI-Europe, arguing that charges should be more in proportion with the "full economic cost" of investment programmes. In short, they would like to see an end of the "single till" which lumps together both aeronautical and commercial revenues as the pot from which airports must fund themselves. "Why should revenues from smokers, drinkers and partners go into lower charges to subsidise the airlines?" asks Roy Griffins, ACI Europe director general. Airlines answer that it is because they bring in the passengers without whom the airport would not exist.
That is a debate that will run and run. Although both sides are talking about the need for a more mature and constructive dialogue, while the heat remains in the charges issue the debate continues to sound more like an argument.
KEVIN O'TOOLE EDINBURGH AND JACKIE THOMPSON LONDON
Source: Airline Business
