Reece

The four areas of deep concern are a lack of airspace and airways, lack of terminal space, lack of runways and worsening ground access to most major airports.

Each of these problems could attract enough words to make War and Peace look like a short novel. We are all aware of the problems afflicting Sydney, which is now internationally recognised by I ATA as being amongst the world’s worst airports for congestion.

Sydney though is kids stuff compared with what now occurs throughout most of North America and Europe. Lufthansa, a highly respected airline that prides itself on its domestic on-time performance is being progressively decimated through delays largely emanating from its Frankfurt hub filtering through entire northern European network. What Lufthansa is experiencing though is just symptomatic of the problems of most other major carriers, in Europe, throughout all of North America and more recently in Asia. In fact, I ATA estimated that last year delays were the equivalent of keeping 500 A320 class airliners permanently grounded. No industry can survive an operational or economic handicap of that magnitude and it is growing worse by the month.

At a recent international air transport conference hosted by the Financial Times of London, senior representatives of major airlines and I ATA graphically detailed the inevitable strangulation of one of the world’s largest and most dynamic industries unless massive pressure is put upon the world’s aviation bureaucracies for immediate change.

And that change is not easy. What is needed for the decade ahead is something in the order of $300bn of investment in new and upgraded airports, airways and infrastructure and an accompanying improvement in ground access for major airports. Future air travellers won’t be motivated to travel one hour by jet between cities if it takes them twice that long to fight their way through never ending traffic jams to sit in a jet that is then held at the gate till a takeoff slot is available. Our major feature on the likely impact of very fast rail upon short haul air transport in the March issue highlighted the importance of aviation improving ground access to airports as a primary consideration for both now and the future.

The sad fact is that at present there are only four new major airports either planned or already under construction. Kansai airport is being built entirely on reclaimed land in the middle of Osaka Bay at enormous expense to help relieve Tokyo’s Narita for international traffic although it is already expected to have technically reached capacity by the time it opens later this decade. The new airport at Munich will relieve to some extent the problems of Frankfurt, whilst a new super airport proposed to be built on an East German Air Force base south of Berlin may ultimately prove even more dynamic than the recycling of the infamous Berlin Wall. Hong Kong has finally bitten the bullet and dedicated up to $30bn for a replacement for Kai Tak though this too could be capacity constrained within ten years if air transport in the Asia/Pacific rim continues to expand at the dizzy rate of recent years.

Traffic in the region has for several years now logged increases more than twice that of Europe or the US A and is expected to more than double by the year 2000. The only other major airport under development is the new mega hub slated to replace Denver’s Stapleton airport around mid decade. In fact, this may well become the first of the proposed wayports (refer p34 Jan 90 A A) which are being touted in the US as a possible 21st Century solution to the problem of congestion.

I suppose if you were a perennial optimist, orperhaps either just totally naive, you could also add Badgerys Creek to that list though from long experience we might just not hold our breath on that one ever becoming anything more than a political whipping horse. On the positive side, the FAC and C A A are set to invest more than $3bn between now and the end of the decade on a significant range of improvements to our airport and airways system. This is good news and will at least give deregulation the opportunity of being able to fly in a modern operating environment, something that the US lacked and Europe is now only just beginning to grapple with as a major issue.

Building new airports is no easy task. Vast tracts of suitable land have to be found and purchased. Residents have to be convinced that the proposed airport isgoing to benefit them – a near impossible task worldwide. Even upgrading existing airports is fraught with difficulty as there is always an active residents action group set to oppose in vigorous terms any extension as we Australians well know. Apart from creating thousands of new jobs, a new airport or a major upgrading can greatly improve life for local residents if rapid transit rail and new freeways are also a part of the plan. KSA, for instance, will inevitably be the catalyst for a major road and rail upgrading in the Botany region whilst more than half of the 17,000 people who work at KS A actually live within 10kms of the airport. Botany without KSA might well be quieter but it might also be little more than a deeply impoverished urban backwater.

If major problems exist in the lack of runways, terminals and land airport access then the fourth harbinger of doom is a lack of airways capacity.

Many within the two and a half year old IATA Task Force on Airport and Airspace Congestion believe that much of the airways problems would be resolved if there wasn’t a problem on the ground. The lack of concrete is thus actually helping create a growing problem in the airways system not only in terminal control zones but also far away where TC A congestion slows inbound aircraft hundreds of miles from their destination to help alleviate the queuing at already crowded holding beacons. The recent Avianca 707 crash was a classic example of just how bad this problem is becoming worldwide where the congestion at one airport can affect the operation of an airliner thousands of miles away. Areas of greatest concern are in the Bay of Bengal, routes transiting Europe feeding to and from the Middle East and Asia, the South China Sea and the North Atlantic. Use of larger aircraft, more non stop flights(effectively eliminating one or more airport movements plus ‘straightening’ out a flight profile and thus bypassing a zone of possible airways congestion) and the new satellite based navigation systems and airways management philosophies being pioneered through the Future Air Navigation Needs prog’ram are all seen as the primary solutions to the airways component of the congestion nightmare.

IATA has already activated a top level think tank to come up with real time solutions to the above problems. The Task Force will be working with government, major airlines and ICAO. Nothing short of a full blooded effort though will be good enough to overcome the immense challenges ahead for our industry in the years ahead.

If aviation cannot conquer these four major problems then it will be unable to grow, serve its client market or prosper. The longterm outcome of which barely needs mentioning.