Journal of Air Transport Management 6 (2000) 249}250
Book review
Strategic Airport Planning
Robert E. Caves and Geo!rey D. Gosling (Eds.):
Pergamon, An imprint of Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1999,
pp. xiv-451.
This book should be a required reading for all airport
planners } government and private sector. While ex-
tremely lengthy, the book contains a number of very
interesting and useful case studies. As well, the authors
put forth some very important points for the future of
airport planning.
I would like to begin, however, by stating that this
book is incorrectly titled. The correct title should be
`Strategic Airport Systems Planninga. The title `Strategic
Airport Planninga suggests the airport as a business.
I would have expected this book to deal with topics such
as business strategy, "nance, market positioning, etc.
Instead, this book is about the state of the art in airport
planning and the strategic change of direction which the
airport planning profession must take. Airport planning
is that discipline which deals with issues such as forecast-
ing tra$c growth, land-use planning, airport capacity
planning, etc.
The book points out that the practice of airport plann-
ing generally is done on a site-speci"c basis. They argue
that this local optimisation approach results in a failure
to achieve broad national and presumably international
objectives. Some important points made in this regard
include
E `Plans have all too often failed to generate appropriate
airport systemsa.
E `Airport system plans have often been made in isola-
tion from the airline route structure. This had led to
problems with feeder service access to hub airportsa.
E `Most airport systems seem to have evolved with no
"rm objectives other than to provide capacity to
match revealed demanda.
E `There is often an undue emphasis on forecasting
future demand from historic revealed demand data,
with little attention to the consequences of changes in
technology, operating practices, etc.a
The authors argue that there is a need to plan airports
with the consideration of access to national and global
airline networks. They are especially critical of planning
at the London area airports, where Heathrow has evol-
ved into a major international hub, but at the cost of
locking out access of UK regional markets to that
hub.
The authors propose a number of solutions. Important
points among these are
E Emphasis must turn away from forecasting based on
historical data. Instead, forecasts should be based on
improved modelling of air systems and air passenger
demand.
E Speci"cally, the authors highly recommend developing
much more sophisticated models of the decision-mak-
ing process of passengers in terms of which carrier and
which routing they choose to #y on.
E As well, airport forecasting should also be based on
improved modelling of airline pro"t-motivated deci-
sions in their response to capacity constraints in the
airport system.
E The authors put forth a number of issues that must be
contemplated in future airport planning. For example,
what will be the impact of carbon taxes over the next
20}40 years?
Another point made is `the current airport planning
process does not deal well with uncertaintya. Here, the
book argues that future decisions by passengers and
airlines are subject to great uncertainties. An e!ective
airport planning process must move away from single
central forecasts, and instead, consider a wider range of
options, assessing the risk associated with each option in
terms of the future airport plan and system plan.
In putting forth the argument for better modelling of
passenger behaviour and airline decision making, the
book argues that investment in such modelling is very
inexpensive, relative to the cost of developing new facili-
ties, as well as the cost of making strategic mistakes in the
airport capacity plan. They point out that airport plann-
ing costs are typically less than one-half of one per cent of
capital costs. Increased expenditure on airport system
planning may have enormous pay-o! for governments,
communities and airport managers.
While the above "rst major theme of the book deals
with the need for improved airport system planning pro-
cesses, the second theme is that related to the process of
airport planning. The authors rightly point out that there
is growing cynicism in government and communities
regarding this process. Typically, airport planners do
their work in relative isolation, presenting almost "nish-
ed plans to communities and policy makers for endorse-
ment. This leads to enormous con#ict in the approval
250 Book review / Journal of Air Transport Management 6 (2000) 249}250
process. In its place the book argues in favour of a much
earlier involvement of policy makers and opinion leaders.
Their early involvement should focus on items such as
the establishment of objectives, priorities, and criteria.
The two themes of this book are of enormous import-
ance to airport planners, government regulatory authori-
ties and communities in general. Unfortunately, the
message of the book is often lost in its enormous volumes
of detail. This book runs to 450 pages of very small print.
Nevertheless, some of the detail will be of signi"cant
interest to airport planning practitioners.
While I recommend this book be added to your profes-
sional bookshelf, there are a number of points which
could have been improved upon.
E This book is largely focussed on experiences of the UK
and the US. While there are a few case studies of other
airports and systems, they lack detail. In particular,
there is little discussion of airports in Asia. Three pages
are allocated to the Japanese airport system but this
fails to review the important lessons to be learnt from
the planning of Narita, the role assignment to Haneda,
the new airport at Chubu and how the Japanese in fact
have adopted the systems plan. As well, examples from
Canada would also have been useful. Canada is the
one country, I am aware of, where forecasting is not
solely based on the analysis of historical data. Instead,
its approach is a true systems approach. Forecasts are
based on contemplating system constraints and pas-
senger responses. This results in a forecasting process,
which reassigns origin destination tra$c to di!erent
network paths as conditions in markets and the air-
port environment change.
E I would also have liked to have seen the book extend
the airport system concept to the global level. For
example, it is my opinion that the airport community
should be stronger advocates for stage 4 noise require-
ments, etc. The authors' point out that `aircraft tech-
0969-6997/00/$ - see front matter  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 9 - 6 9 9 7 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 1 2 - 0
nology has the ability to respond innovatively2a and
this should have been followed through to policy.
E A major de"ciency of the book is ignoring the critical
role that pricing plays. The approach taken here is still
the typical planning/engineering approach of grapp-
ling with providing su$cient capacity to meet demand.
The authors generally ignore the role of pricing and
other demand management techniques. This is ironic
given that the authors put forth information on the
success of Heathrow in implementing peak-load pric-
ing, resulting in the displacement of regional feeder
services from the airport. This, of course, is a paradox
as the authors claim that the London airports system
is a failure because low-volume regional services have
been displaced.
E I would also have liked to have seen better treatment
of the critical issue of when a region should move from
single airport to multiple airport operations. In my
opinion, this is one of the most critical questions that
large numbers of communities across the globe will be
facing over the next 10}20 years.
E The book also leaves one with the sense that the
authors prefer a centrally planned approach for the
role of airports within national and continental sys-
tems. Short shrift is given to the legitimate desires of
non-hub communities to develop direct long-range
services to other important gateways.
Overall, this book has a very powerful and persuasive
argument to put forth about the need for change in the
airport planning practice. I recommend this book.
Mike Tretheway
InterVISTAS Consulting Inc., Suite 550 1200 w 73rd Ave.
Airport Square
Vancouver BC, Canada V6P 6G5
E-mail address: mike}tretheway@InterVistas.com