Environmental Capacity
Airports want growth and improved assets utilization. Traditionally, this is achieved through increased aircraft movements, yielding greater revenue and investment return. However, these traditional approaches only work up to a point.
An airport’s growth is limited by its capacity. Capacity can be either physical or environmental. Physical Capacity is the airport’s passenger and aircraft throughput capability within the existing physical infrastructure of terminals, runways, baggage handling facilities, etc. Environmental Capacity, on the other hand, is how much tolerance the neighboring community has for adverse environmental impacts arising directly from airport operations.
Strained airport/community relations are often the result of the community’s intolerance to aircraft noise, which in some cases lead to caps on movement numbers and, in worst-case scenarios, the introduction of curfews in order to remain within community tolerances.
Both these measures reduce airport revenue, constrain ROI (Return On Investment) on physical assets and diminish commercial competitiveness.
The challenge, therefore, is to implement an airport management plan that expands environmental capacity in line with projections of aircraft movements. Central to this is lessening objections to growth through community ‘buy-in’. This is gauged as true Community Tolerance which can only be raised by engaging with the community to establish mutually agreed benchmarks and noise abatement/impact reduction programs.
Comprehensive reporting, in a transparent, easy to understand and accessible form is the cornerstone of this type of initiative.
At Lochard, we call this balanced approach Expanding Environmental Capacity. |
