[Peetwo]

Interesting article thorny...

Much like aviation, these economic experts and commentators continue to provide free of charge good factual analysis with simple solutions for the problems that are currently inhibiting growth in the Australian economy. Yet the fat cat bureaucrats and pollywaffles in Can'tberra continue to ignore all the free advice while slurping from the taxpayer trough and squabbling amongst themselves - meanwhile the same mistakes get made over and over again...

Here's another interesting article thorny, on airports and airport development, this time from the other Aunty...

What Australia can learn from the world's best airports
RN
By Annabelle Quince for Rear Vision

Posted earlier today at 7:00amSat 8 Jul 2017, 7:00am
Photo: Successful airports are built with future capacity increases in mind. (Getty Images: Zgr-pro)


Airports were once nothing more than grassy strips suited for biplanes, with only rudimentary forms of infrastructure.

But after the Second World War, aircraft became bigger and heavier. Accordingly, airports began to pave their runways to handle heavier planes and expand their terminals. They ended up with buildings that looked recognisably like the airports we see today: cities in their own right.

So, what makes a good airport, and are there things we can learn from the world's best?

Privatisation vs government control

Before the Second World War — and for a long time after — most airports were owned and operated by the state. The largest airport in the Netherlands, Schiphol Airport, was owned by the city of Amsterdam until the 1950s.

When it became clear that the city was not willing or able to finance a Schiphol upgrade, the national government of the Netherlands took ownership of three-quarters of the newly upgraded aerodrome.

But governmental control comes with challenges, particularly when the interests of different levels of government come into conflict. This problem, according Douglas Baker, head of property and planning at Queensland University of Technology, is particularly true in Australia.

Listen to the episode

Annabelle Quince looks at the best airports in the world.

"On one hand we have airports controlled by national governments expanding, and then we have state planning and city planning expanding around that," he says.

Professor Baker says that the layering of governments can lead to "silences" between the two. "That occurred worldwide, I think — certainly in the United States and certainly Australia."

In the 1980s, under Margaret Thatcher, the British government began to experiment with airport privatisation. Portions of London's Gatwick were sold off, and in Australia airport privatisation accelerated under the Howard government.

Today, Professor Baker says, Australia has the most privatised airport system in the world.

'A shopping mall near a runway'

You can divide the real estate of airports into two categories: air side (runways, hangars) and land side (food courts, duty free stores). Today, Australia's largely privatised airports are among the most profitable businesses in the country — and a large chunk of that profit is not related to aviation.

According to Professor Baker, some 30 to 40 per cent of Australian airports' revenue comes from the land side.

"One of the most lucrative revenue streams is parking," he says.

"They are now businesses. They have shareholders, and the airports have got a turnover to shareholders — and fair enough."

Photo: Airports are major pieces of infrastructure, and a variety of factors can contribute to their success or failure. (Unsplash.com: Skyler Smith, CC-0)

For Antonin Kazda, professor of airport design and operation at the University of Žilina in Slovakia, this throws up something of an existential question for airport operators.

"Is it still an airport, or is it a shopping mall somewhere near a runway?" he asks.

Professor Kazda argues that the rush to create new revenue streams through commercial development has an impact on what is termed, in the business, passenger experience.
(Intuitively, this makes sense: navigating crowded shops en route to a boarding gate is hardly an enjoyable experience.)

Interestingly, Professor Kazda sees variety by country. In the UK and Ireland, he says airports have become like big shopping malls. "On the other hand, if you go to the US, it's quite the opposite."

Capacity to build

In the 1970s, Singapore's aviation industry faced something of a conundrum. Global air travel was a booming industry, and its existing two airports were struggling to keep up.

These forces led to the development of Changi airport — now consistently voted one of the best airports in the world. For Alan Chong, associate professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, Singaporean governments were right to target aviation as a growth industry.

"Flights to and from Australia, of course, had to stop over in Singapore at some point," he says.

The new Changi airport, Professor Chong says, was deliberately situated by the sea: with land reclamation techniques ensuring it would have little impact on residential dwellings (at least in theory).

The world's successful airports

For Professor Baker, the world's best airports are Changi, Hong Kong, Amsterdam's Schiphol and Vancouver.


Photo: Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport is built unusually close to the CBD for a major airport. (Flickr.com: Paula Funnell, CC-BY-NC-SA)

"What makes all these airports a joy to move through is the passenger experience in terms of moving through customs and then moving into the terminals and transferring," he says.

According to Professor Chong, what makes a good airport is government control. "Aviation is a political goal which should not be impeded in any way."

Government ownership ensures that, in the likely event of expansion, airports have an easier time negotiating land acquisition and resettlement processes, he says.

Sydney's new airport

Airport constructions are, like any major work of infrastructure, relatively thin on the ground. So where does the above leave Badgerys Creek, Sydney's long-awaited second airport?

Professor Baker says the first thing to be decided has to be the role of the new aerodrome.

"Do we want an airport that does all the regional hubbing? Do we want an airport that competes directly with Sydney? What type of second airport are we developing?" he asks.

Professor Alan Chong, for his part, is excited. "Building a second airport from scratch is one of the most wonderful things in anyone's national development plan," he says.

"An airport is no longer just a bricks and mortar facility for aviation transit, it has to be a destination in itself."

MTF...P2