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Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies
Chapter 10
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies In this chapter, we first present the traffic situation for the year 2016 and the forecasts for the years 2030 and 2040. Thereafter we assess different mitigation strategies for the capacity problem. The current chapter closes with the case study and finally the conclusion. The year 2016 serves as the base year in all our forecasts and analyses. With the exception of the top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated passenger volume and the case study, the resolution level of the results presented is the seven world regions which we have already introduced earlier in this book.
10.1 Traffic situation in 2016 The traffic situation of the year 2016 has been extensively analysed in Part I of the book, the results of which serve in this section as the starting point for the 2030 and 2040 forecasts. Thus we briefly recapitulate passenger and flight volume, and aircraft size by world region.
10.1.1 Passenger volume In this chapter, passenger volume refers to the total passenger volume, including transfer passengers between two airports. Fig. 10.1 displays the annual passenger volume by world region in 2016. The number of passengers by world region corresponds thereby with the total number of enplaned passengers of that region. The sum of enplaned passengers of all seven world regions is equal to the total number of passengers carried worldwide. Almost four billion air passengers were transported in 2016 worldwide according to Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI) (2016), which is a slightly higher value compared to the ICAO figure of almost 3.8 billion passengers [International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), 2017; see Chapter 1: Introduction]. However, for the forecast, we need data on passenger and flight volume by airport pair, so we have chosen Sabre MI data for reasons of consistency, and furthermore, forecast growth rates are not affected by this difference. Airport Capacity Constraints and Strategies for Mitigation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-812657-8.00010-5 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
225
226 Million
PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040 1600
Annual passenger volume
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.1 Annual passenger volume in 2016 by world region; global sum is 4.0 billion passengers carried [Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016].
More than 1.3 billion passengers enplaned in Asia, almost one billion in Europe and more than 900 million in North America in 2016. Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific account for almost 710 million air passengers. About 85% of the passengers had trip origin and destination within world regions. Exceptions are, in particular, the Middle East and Africa, which have a share of intraregional traffic of only 43% and 62%, respectively, and thus are more connected to other world regions. Twenty-two per cent of the air passengers at African airports travelled between Africa and Europe and 13% between Africa and the Middle East. Here, a large part of the passenger volume flies to destinations such as Cape Town and tourism destinations in the northern part of Africa. The airports of the Middle East serve as transfer points between Europe and Asia. About 24% of air passengers travelled between the Middle East and Asia and 19% between the Middle East and Europe. Larger markets such as North America and Asia have a higher-than-average share of intraregional traffic (87% and 92%, respectively) due to more domestic traffic. However, Asia, especially, is a world region that comprises many countries including China, Japan and Indonesia. On the other hand, the North American region consists only of the United States and Canada.
10.1.2 Flight volume Fig. 10.2 shows the annual flight volume in 2016 by world region. There were 35.5 million flights in 2016 (see Fig. 3.9 in Section 3.4). The distribution of flight volume among the world regions is similar to the distribution of passenger
Million
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12
Annual flight volume
10
8
6
4
2
0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.2 Annual flight volume in 2016 by world region; global sum is 35.5 million flights [Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016].
volume. The largest world regions in terms of flight volume are Asia (10.4 million), North America (10.0 million) and Europe (8.3 million). North America and Europe switched rankings, because average aircraft size, that is passengers per flight, is much lower in North America than in Europe, as shown in Section 10.1.3. The remaining four regions account for almost 6.7 million flights. More than 90% of the flight volume in 2016 took place within world regions. This is a slightly higher value compared to the passenger volume, as smaller aircraft are employed for shorter distances. Thus intraregional flights receive more weight in the distribution. This is especially true for the North American region, which is dominated by domestic flights. Here, 93% of the flights are intraregional, and North America accounts for 23% of the global passenger volume, and even for 28% of the global flight volume in 2016. Africa and the Middle East are again regions with the lowest share of intraregional flights (75% and 55%, respectively). However, these values are substantially higher than the corresponding shares of passenger volume, because passengers per flight tend to increase with distance travelled. This is particularly evident for flights between Africa and Europe. They account for 14% of all flights at African airports, and even for 22% of the passenger volume.
10.1.3 Aircraft size Table 10.1 presents the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2016 by world region. This is the ratio of the values of Figs 10.1 and
TABLE 10.1 Passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2016 by world region; global mean value is 111 [Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016]. Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Africa
79
185
148
149
218
183
205
Asia
185
126
183
193
232
198
191
Europe
148
183
110
178
218
267
n.a.
Middle East
149
193
178
114
281
260
338
North America
218
232
218
281
85
121
245
South America
183
198
267
260
121
92
220
Southwest Pacific
205
191
n.a.
338
245
220
87
Ø
96
130
118
146
91
99
97
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
229
10.2. The global mean value of passengers per flight is 111. Mean values by world region are shown in the last row of Table 10.1. Asia (130), Europe (118) and the Middle East (146) are above average, while Africa (96), North America (91), South America (99) and the Southwest Pacific (97) are below average. The lowest average number of passengers per flight can be found in North America due to the high share of domestic flights. Furthermore, the diagonal of Table 10.1 shows the average number of passengers per flight for intraregional flights. These values are, in every case, significantly lower than the values for interregional flights of the corresponding region. The three lowest values are Africa (79), North America (85) and South America (92). Off-diagonal values represent aircraft size of interregional flights. These values tend to increase with flight distance; however, aircraft size of flights from or to Asian airports and airports of the Middle East tend to be generally higher. South America and the Southwest Pacific are special cases due to their geographical position. While values of aircraft size for intraregional flights are among the lowest (92 and 87, respectively), values of passengers per flight for interregional flights are very high because of the large flight distances to most other regions. Finally, the top three values of passengers per flight for interregional flights are on routes of Middle East Southwest Pacific (338), North America Middle East (281) and Europe South America (267).
10.2 Forecast assumptions for 2030 and 2040 Before discussing the forecast results for the years 2030 and 2040, we need to describe the key assumptions that are essential for a sound interpretation of the results from a practitioner’s perspective. We distinguish between two kinds of assumptions as follows: G
G
Assumptions regarding input variables: this category comprises the development of future input variables of the models of Part II, such as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, population and airfare. Assumptions resulting from the model design (Part II of the book): these assumptions are at first sight less obvious than those of the first category, but they have a substantial effect on model results.
Regarding input variables, we focus on the category ‘variable’ of Table 6.2, which means real GDP per capita, population and air fares. Forecasts of real GDP per capita and population have been retrieved from Information Handling Services (IHS) Markit (2017) for each country. Fig. 10.3 displays the distribution of growth rates of these variables between countries and the global mean values which have been calculated by weighting the original values by passenger volume of the year 2016 to account for their relevance for global air traffic development. Thus for real GDP per capita, we assume a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.49% for the
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040 5%
4%
CAGR population
3%
2% 2016–30 1%
0% –4%
–2%
0%
–1%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
2030–40
–2%
CAGR real GDP per capita 2016–30
2030–40
Global mean values
FIGURE 10.3 Forecast growth rates (CAGR) for real GDP per capita and population for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 [Information Handling Services (IHS) Markit, 2017]. CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
period 2016 30 and 2.19% for the period 2030 40, which results in a CAGR of 2.36% for the period 2016 40. This means that global economic development slows down between 2030 and 2040. The economic development of more mature economies, such as North America and Europe, is forecast to be rather stable between 2016 and 2040, however, much slower compared to GDP per capita growth rates of emerging markets such as Asia and the Middle East. On the other hand, emerging markets, in particular Asia and the Middle East, are forecast to grow much faster in terms of GDP per capita, but they slow down between 2030 and 2040 compared to the 2016 30 period, for example, because of saturation effects. Regarding the development of the global population, we assume a CAGR of 0.55% for the period 2016 30 and 0.32% for the period 2030 40, which yields a CAGR of 0.46% for the period 2016 40. This means that global population growth also slows down between 2030 and 2040. While forecasts of GDP per capita and population are available, this is not the case for the future development of airfares. Based on the analyses described in Chapter 6, Modelling future air passenger demand, we assume that airfares decline globally by 1.5% p.a. on average in real terms because of further technological, institutional and organisational innovations, such as more cost-efficient aircraft, regulatory changes and improvements in air traffic management and control. Nevertheless, airfares are expected to rise in nominal terms, if inflation exceeds 1.5% per year on average. This is
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
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especially likely to be the case in countries with a higher level of inflation. Ultimately, this assumption does not mean that nominal airfares develop synchronously among countries and routes, as different levels of inflation lead to different levels of nominal airfare development. But, improvements in productivity, which are driven by the aforementioned innovations, are typically not limited to a particular country or flight route and are eventually spread around the globe in the long term, because air traffic is a global phenomenon. Furthermore, we do not consider measures, such as congestion pricing, because this presently is still a theoretical option, as discussed in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints; however, it may play a more important role in the future. Assumptions of the second category are hard-wired in the models, and the reader is referred to Part II of this book for more details. In this chapter, we focus on key assumptions, which have far-reaching effects on the forecast results and their analysis, especially from a practitioner’s perspective. These key assumptions comprise G G G G
technological innovations, airport capacity utilisation, aircraft load factor, and unaccommodated demand in 2016.
Regarding technological innovations, we assume gradual progress, but no radical change. This is reflected, for example, in the assumption about future airfare development and incorporated especially in the models of airport capacity and aircraft size. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is not well suited for radical technological change, as it is essentially a sophisticated benchmarking approach based upon best practices. The second key assumption that underlies the forecasts is that of airport capacity utilisation. Here, we assume the highest possible utilisation that is supported by empirical evidence. This is the key assumption of the airport capacity model in Chapter 7, Modelling future airport capacity and capacity utilisation. Therefore, we assume that off-peak times during daytime will be increasingly filled up over time as traffic volume grows and available airport capacity runs short. While we do not model the flight load factor, the implicit assumption of the aircraft size model of Chapter 9, Modelling future development of the average number of passengers per flight, is that route-specific load factors achieve the highest possible level that is supported by empirical evidence, if passenger demand is sufficiently high. The higher the load factor is, the higher is the number of passengers per aircraft. Modelling load factors explicitly becomes necessary if we assign specific aircraft types to routes; however, this is not the case in this book. To sum up, we are cautious regarding rapid technological innovations and assume the best possible utilisation of airport and aircraft capacity. From our point of view, these assumptions are necessary to avoid producing forecast results that do not have a sound empirical foundation.
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
Finally, unaccommodated passenger volume is defined in this book as the passenger demand that cannot be served because of limited airport capacity, including mitigation measures such as expanding airport capacity and employing larger aircraft with more seat capacity. However, we have chosen to disregard any unaccommodated passenger volume in 2016, because it is hard to identify with satisfactory precision by hindsight. Furthermore, as we will see in Section 10.3.1, the number of unaccommodated passengers is forecast to be still very low in 2030 on a global level, so the assumption of almost no unaccommodated passengers in 2016 seems to be not too restrictive. For 2030, this volume is relevant only for a small number of important airports (see Table 10.7 further down) and in 2016 most likely just for London Heathrow (LHR). Thus as it seems to be of only minor relevance for 2016 and to avoid arbitrary results, we maintain this assumption, but we have to keep in mind that strictly speaking the forecast unaccommodated passenger volume for 2030 and 2040 is only the difference to 2016, so that the numbers are just slightly on the low side in total terms, maybe with the exception of LHR.
10.3 Traffic forecasts for 2016 30 In this section, we present the results of the traffic forecast for 2030. As for the base year of 2016, we display passenger and flight volume, and aircraft size of the year 2030 and their growth rates (CAGR) for the time period from 2016 to 2030. Furthermore, we identify the unaccommodated demand by world region and the top 20 airports worldwide in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2030.
10.3.1 Passenger volume Fig. 10.4 shows the forecast annual passenger volume by world region for the year 2030. A global passenger volume of almost seven billion air passengers is expected for 2030, which is about 1.76 times the passenger volume of 2016, with a CAGR of 4.1% (see Table 10.2). More than 2.6 billion passengers are forecast for Asia, followed by Europe with almost 1.6 billion passengers and North America with nearly 1.5 billion passengers. Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific are expected to account for about 1.3 billion air passengers in 2030. As in 2016, 85% of the passengers are forecast to have flight origins and destinations within world regions. Thus 5.9 billion passengers use intraregional air services. The relative intraregional distribution of passenger volume is forecast to remain more or less the same as in 2016. The Middle East and Africa are expected have a share of intraregional traffic of about 42% and 64%, respectively, which is only marginally different from the situation of 2016. Twenty per cent of air passengers of Africa are forecast to travel to
Million
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3000
Annual passenger volume
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0 Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.4 Forecast annual passenger volume for the year 2030 by world region; global sum is 6.9 billion passengers carried.
Europe and 14% to the Middle East. This means that the Middle East is expected to gain slightly in importance for African airports, while European airports will become less important, however, only very slightly. In 2030 the airports of the Middle East will still serve as transfer points between Europe and Asia. A share of 27% of air passengers is forecast to travel between the Middle East and Asia and 18% between the Middle East and Europe. Thus the Asian region gains in importance for the Middle East, while the European region becomes slightly less important. The higher-than-average shares of intraregional travel of the large markets of North America and Asia (87% and 92%, respectively) will remain virtually constant in 2030 compared to 2016. Table 10.2 displays the annual passenger volume growth rates for the time period from 2016 to 2030. A CAGR of 4.1% is forecast for the global mean value; however, there is significant variation between world regions. Asia, the Middle East and Africa show the highest annual growth rates of 4.9%, 4.5% and 4.4%, respectively. However, the value of Africa, in particular, has to be put in perspective, because of the low demand volume level. Africa and the Southwest Pacific have by far the lowest passenger volume in 2016 and 2030, and about one-third percentage points above-average growth rates over a time period of 14 years will not change things significantly. The same applies more or less to the Middle East, which is the third smallest region in terms of passenger volume in 2016 and 2030. All the more important becomes the value of 4.9% of the Asian region, as it is the largest world
TABLE 10.2 Forecast annual passenger volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2016 30 by world region; global mean value is 4.1%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
4.6
5.4
3.9
4.6
4.0
4.1
4.1
Asia
5.4
5.0
3.9
5.0
3.9
4.2
4.1
Europe
3.9
3.9
3.3
4.1
3.3
3.7
n.a.
Middle East
4.6
5.0
4.1
4.4
4.2
4.6
4.5
North America
4.0
3.9
3.3
4.2
3.5
3.7
3.8
South America
4.1
4.2
3.7
4.6
3.7
4.1
4.2
Southwest Pacific
4.1
4.1
n.a.
4.5
3.8
4.2
3.7
Ø
4.4
4.9
3.4
4.5
3.5
4.0
3.8
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
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Unaccommodated annual passenger volume
Million
region in terms of passenger volume both in 2016 and 2030. Therefore the global mean value of 4.1% is essentially a result of the strong passenger volume growth of the Asian region, as the other two large regions, Europe and North America, are expected to grow much slower, because their markets are more developed. In fact, all regions except Africa, Asia and the Middle East show below-average growth rates in terms of forecast passenger volume in 2030. The highest growth rate of Table 10.2 with 5.4% is the growing air travel between Africa and Asia, followed by a value of 5.0% for air travel between Asia and the Middle East, as well as within the Asian region. However, while passenger volume between Africa and Asia accounts for only 0.1% and between Asia and the Middle East just for about 2.4% of the forecast global passenger volume in 2030, the Asian domestic volume has a share of more than 35%. In contrast, the three lowest growth rates can be found for the European domestic (3.3%), Europe North America (3.3%) and North American domestic (3.5%) travel flows. In particular, the growth of European and North American domestic passenger volumes has a significant impact on the global mean value, as they each account for about 19% of the forecast global passenger volume in 2030. Fig. 10.5 presents the unaccommodated annual passenger volume in 2030 by world region. As already explained, unaccommodated passenger volume is the forecast passenger demand that cannot be served as a result of a capacity shortage at airports, including mitigation measures such as expanding 25
20
15
10
5
0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.5 Forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for the year 2030 by world region; global sum is 49.4 million passengers.
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airport capacity and employing larger aircraft with more seat capacity. Thus the forecast ‘unconstrained’ passenger demand is defined by the sum of the values of Figs 10.4 and 10.5; however, this is only a theoretical value. Unaccommodated passenger volume is computed for each airport pair to consider route-specific developments regarding passengers per flight and airport capacity limits. The unaccommodated passenger volume totals up to 49 million passengers worldwide in 2030 and represents about 0.7% of the forecast global unconstrained passenger volume in 2030. The largest amounts of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030 can be found in Asia (21.0 million), North America (19.2 million) and Europe (7.0 million), because airport capacity and aircraft size developments in these regions are insufficient for serving the unconstrained passenger demand. In these three regions, intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume has the highest share of total unaccommodated passenger volume per region (58% for Europe, 89% for North America and 92% for Asia). On the other hand, intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume does not exist in Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific, as sufficient airport capacity is expected for 2030. Unaccommodated passenger volume in these regions is solely a result of insufficient airport capacity in other regions and sums up to about 2.2 million passengers in 2030. Here, we call unaccommodated demand of a region or airport, which is caused by a lack of airport capacity of the same region or airport, ‘direct capacity constraints’, while we name unaccommodated demand of a region or airport, which is caused by a lack of airport capacity of another region or airport, ‘indirect capacity constraints’. Thus the unaccommodated demand of Asia, Europe and North America is primarily caused by direct capacity constraints, while Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific suffer from indirect capacity constraints. Table 10.3 displays the forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for 2030 by world region, which is defined as the ratio of the values of Fig. 10.5 to the sum of the values of Figs 10.4 and 10.5, that means the ratio of unaccommodated passenger volume to unconstrained passenger volume. North America, Asia and Europe show the highest values, while Africa, South America and the Southwest Pacific have almost negligible shares of unaccommodated demand, which can be found exclusively in interregional passenger volume. The case of the Middle East is quite unique. While there is no capacity shortage at Middle Eastern airports, the forecast share of unaccommodated demand is almost as high as that of Europe, because of airport capacity constraints in Asia and Europe.
10.3.2 Flight volume Fig. 10.6 shows the flight volume forecast for 2030 by world region. Nearly 46 million flights are forecast for the year 2030 globally, which means that
TABLE 10.3 Forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for the year 2030 by world region; global mean value is 0.9%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
0.0
2.4
0.5
0.0
1.1
0.0
0.0
Asia
2.4
0.8
1.2
0.8
0.7
0.0
0.4
Europe
0.5
1.2
0.3
0.8
2.1
0.3
n.a.
Middle East
0.0
0.8
0.8
0.0
0.5
0.0
0.0
North America
1.1
0.7
2.1
0.5
1.3
0.6
0.0
South America
0.0
0.0
0.3
0.0
0.6
0.0
0.0
Southwest Pacific
0.0
0.4
n.a.
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
Ø
0.1
0.8
0.4
0.4
1.3
0.1
0.0
Million
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040 16
14
Annual flight volume
12
10
8
6
4
2
0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.6 Forecast annual flight volume for the year 2030 by world region; global sum is 45.8 million flights.
the global flight volume grows by almost 29% compared to 2016; however, this is much lower than the growth of passenger volume of 76%. The largest regions in terms of flight volume are Asia (14.6 million), North America (12.3 million) and Europe (10.1 million). Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific account for almost 8.7 million flights in 2030. As in 2016, 90% of the traffic is forecast to take place within world regions. Thus 41.3 million flights are intraregional. The relative intraregional distribution of flight volume is expected to remain more or less the same as in 2016. With the exception of Africa and the Middle East, the share of intraregional flights is between 87% (South America) and 95% (Asia). The Middle East and Africa are well below average, and they are expected to have a share of about 55% and 76%, respectively, which is virtually the same as in 2016. Table 10.4 presents the annual flight volume growth rates for the time period from 2016 to 2030. A CAGR of 1.8% is forecast for the global mean value; however, there is considerable variation between world regions. Asia, the Middle East and Africa show the highest annual growth rates of 2.4%, 2.2% and 1.9%, respectively. Europe and North America display forecast growth rates of 1.4% and 1.5%, respectively, which are well below average. South America and the Southwest Pacific each show values of 1.8%. The highest forecast values can be found for the routes of South America Middle East and Southwest Pacific Middle East (2.6%). On the other hand, the lowest value of 1.4% applies for North American and European
TABLE 10.4 Forecast annual flight volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2016 30 by world region; global mean value is 1.8%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
2.0
2.4
1.6
2.2
1.8
1.9
2.0
Asia
2.4
2.5
1.7
2.5
2.0
1.9
2.0
Europe
1.6
1.7
1.4
1.8
1.4
1.9
n.a.
Middle East
2.2
2.5
1.8
2.1
2.2
2.6
2.6
North America
1.8
2.0
1.4
2.2
1.4
1.6
2.1
South America
1.9
1.9
1.9
2.6
1.6
1.9
2.2
Southwest Pacific
2.0
2.0
n.a.
2.6
2.1
2.2
1.7
Ø
1.9
2.4
1.4
2.2
1.5
1.8
1.8
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
domestic, and North American European routes. For 2030 we expect only minor effects of limited airport capacity in South America, the Southwest Pacific and the Middle East, while there will be a significant capacity shortage at airports in Europe, North America and even Asia due to the strong demand growth, eventually limiting further flight volume growth.
10.3.3 Aircraft size Table 10.5 presents the forecast values of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2030, which is the ratio of the values of Figs 10.4 and 10.6. On a global level, average aircraft size is forecast to increase from 111 in 2016 to 152 passengers per flight between 2016 and 2030. Aircraft size is expected to be clearly above average for Asia (181) and the Middle East (201), while the values for Africa (134), North America (120), South America (133) and the Southwest Pacific (128) are forecast to be well below average. The value of Europe (154) is close to the global mean value of 152 passengers per flight. As in 2016, intraregional flights carry on average a lower number of passengers per flight compared to interregional flights in 2030. The lowest number of passengers per flight is forecast for flights within North America (112), Africa (112) and the Southwest Pacific (114). On the other hand, the highest number of passengers per flight is expected for interregional flights, such as Middle East Southwest Pacific (437), Middle East North America (367), South America Middle East (342) and South America Europe (342). Table 10.6 displays the forecast annual growth rates of aircraft size for the time period 2016 30. The global mean value is 2.2%. Africa (2.4%), Asia (2.4%) and the Middle East (2.3%) show above-average values, while the average aircraft size development of Europe (2.0%), North America (2.0%), South America (2.1%) and the Southwest Pacific (2.0%) is below average. The three highest values are 2.9% for African Asian, 2.6% for African domestic and 2.5% for Asian Middle Eastern routes, while the lowest value is 1.7% for North American Southwest Pacific, 1.8% for Asian North American, Middle Eastern Southwest Pacific and European South American routes and 1.9% for European domestic, European North American and North American Middle Eastern routes.
10.3.4 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2030 Table 10.7 presents the top 20 airports regarding unaccommodated passenger demand volume in 2030. Among these 20 airports are ten from Asia, one from Europe, one from the Middle East and eight from North America. As expected, most airports are from world regions which suffer mostly from direct capacity constraints. Here, Atlanta Hartsfield–Jackson (ATL) is
TABLE 10.5 Forecast of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2030 by world region; global mean value is 152. Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Africa
112
275
201
206
294
250
273
Asia
275
177
246
274
298
269
253
Europe
201
246
144
240
284
342
n.a.
Middle East
206
274
240
156
367
342
437
North America
294
298
284
367
112
161
311
South America
250
269
342
342
161
125
292
Southwest Pacific
273
253
n.a.
437
311
292
114
Ø
134
181
154
201
120
133
128
TABLE 10.6 Forecast average aircraft size growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2016 30 by world region; global mean value is 2.2%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
2.6
2.9
2.2
2.4
2.2
2.2
2.1
Asia
2.9
2.4
2.1
2.5
1.8
2.2
2.0
Europe
2.2
2.1
1.9
2.2
1.9
1.8
n.a.
Middle East
2.4
2.5
2.2
2.2
1.9
2.0
1.8
North America
2.2
1.8
1.9
1.9
2.0
2.1
1.7
South America
2.2
2.2
1.8
2.0
2.1
2.2
2.0
Southwest Pacific
2.1
2.0
n.a.
1.8
1.7
2.0
2.0
Ø
2.4
2.4
2.0
2.3
2.0
2.1
2.0
TABLE 10.7 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030. No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
1
ATL
Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson
974
158
162
11.2
6.6
100.0
2
LHR
London Heathrow
523
117
224
8.6
6.8
100.0
3
BOM
Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji
447
98
220
6.7
6.4
100.0
4
CAN
Guangzhou Baiyun
592
121
205
6.7
5.2
100.0
5
ORD
Chicago O’Hare
945
117
123
6.4
5.2
100.0
6
CGK
Jakarta SoekarnoHatta
629
122
195
5.6
4.4
100.0
7
DEL
Delhi Indira Gandhi
599
127
212
3.6
2.7
100.0
8
LGA
New York LaGuardia
416
43
104
2.3
5.1
100.0
9
BLR
Bengaluru Kempegowda
274
51
188
1.0
1.8
100.0
10
DXB
Dubai
538
172
319
0.9
0.5
91.0
11
SIN
Singapore Changi
480
108
224
0.8
0.7
58.5 (Continued )
TABLE 10.7 (Continued) No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
12
LAX
Los Angeles
799
129
162
0.7
0.5
98.2
13
PEK & PKX
Beijing Capital City and Daxing
927
202
218
0.6
0.3
45.5
14
MIA
Miami
404
68
168
0.6
0.8
55.5
15
DFW
Dallas/Fort Worth
807
101
125
0.5
0.5
92.5
16
MCO
Orlando
368
65
176
0.5
0.8
51.6
17
HYD
Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi
182
35
194
0.5
1.4
32.4
18
MAA
Chennai
218
41
188
0.5
1.2
49.6
19
SUB
Juanda
247
45
183
0.5
1.1
47.3
20
BOS
Boston Logan
422
57
135
0.5
0.9
49.0
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
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expected to be the airport with the highest unaccommodated passenger demand volume (11.2 million), followed by London Heathrow (LHR, 8. 6 million) and Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji (BOM, 6.7 million). Their unaccommodated passenger volume represents 6.6%, 6.8% and 6.4%, respectively, of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume in 2030. Airports such as ATL, LHR and BOM have serious capacity problems and thus suffer primarily from direct capacity constraints and have a capacity utilisation of 100%. On the other hand, the airports on the second half of the list of Table 10.7 have a capacity utilisation of less than 100% but suffer from indirect capacity constraints, meaning a capacity shortage at the destination airport. They typically have a forecast unaccommodated passenger volume of around one million per year or less, which is, in most cases, about 1% of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume in 2030 or less. Examples include the two hub airports of Beijing (PEK and PKX), which are treated as an airport system in terms of airport capacity in this book, Chennai (MAA) and Juanda (SUB). Unaccommodated demand volume of these airports lies in a range of between 500,000 and 600,000 passengers in 2030, which is about 0.3% 1.2% of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume. They suffer primarily from indirect capacity constraints, which means that they cannot handle the full demand potential due to a capacity shortage at other destinations. Dubai airport (DXB) is another remarkable case. While not having a capacity shortage itself (nor any other airport of the Middle East) in 2030, unaccommodated passenger volume totals almost one million (0.5% of forecast unconstrained passenger volume) solely because of capacity constraints at airports outside the Middle East. Most of the unaccommodated passenger volume is concentrated on a small number of airports in 2030. The top ten airports account for about 54% of the unaccommodated passenger volume worldwide. Here, the values of Table 10.7 need to be divided by a value of two to allow comparisons with Fig. 10.5, because passengers are counted twice in Table 10.7, as arriving and departing passengers per airport. Nevertheless, while unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030 is rather small compared to the forecast passenger volume on a global level, it is quite significant for particular world regions and airports. However, this is set to change for the time period from 2030 to 2040 and will be described in the next section.
10.4 Traffic forecasts for 2030 40 In this section, we continue with the results of the traffic forecast for 2040. This time, the baseline year is the forecast for 2030, to highlight differences in traffic development between the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40. In particular, we expect airport capacity constraints to become more important during the second period compared to the first. As for the 2030 forecast, we show passenger and flight volume, and aircraft size of the year 2040 and
246
PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
their growth rates (CAGR) for the time period from 2030 to 2040. Again, we identify the unaccommodated demand by world region and the top 20 airports worldwide in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2040.
10.4.1 Passenger volume
Million
Fig. 10.7 presents the forecast annual passenger volume by world region for the year 2040. Nearly 9.4 billion air passengers are expected for 2040 globally, which is about 1.36 times the passenger volume forecast for 2030 and equals a CAGR of 3.1% (see Table 10.8). This is substantially less than for the period 2016 30 and is due to a slower economic development and population growth (see Fig. 10.3), as well as the increasing importance of airport capacity constraints. Almost 3.7 billion passengers are forecast for Asia, followed by Europe with around two billion passengers and North America with more than 1.9 billion passengers. Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific are expected to account for nearly 1.8 billion air passengers in 2040. As before, 85% of the traffic is forecast to take place within world regions. Thus almost eight billion passengers will use intraregional air services. The relative intraregional distribution of passenger volume is forecast to remain more or less the same as in 2016 and 2030. The Middle East and Africa are expected to have a share of intraregional traffic of about 42%
4000
Annual passenger volume
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0 Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.7 Forecast annual passenger volume for the year 2040 by world region; global sum is 9.4 billion.
TABLE 10.8 Forecast annual passenger volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2030 40 by world region; global mean value is 3.1%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
3.7
3.5
3.0
3.7
3.2
3.7
3.6
Asia
3.5
3.4
2.7
3.5
2.8
3.4
3.1
Europe
3.0
2.7
2.6
3.1
2.5
3.1
n.a.
Middle East
3.7
3.5
3.1
3.5
3.2
3.8
3.5
North America
3.2
2.8
2.5
3.2
2.7
3.1
2.9
South America
3.7
3.4
3.1
3.8
3.1
3.6
3.6
Southwest Pacific
3.6
3.1
n.a.
3.5
2.9
3.6
2.9
Ø
3.6
3.3
2.6
3.5
2.8
3.4
3.0
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
and 65%, respectively, which is only a marginal difference compared to the situation of 2016 and 2030. Nineteen per cent of air passengers of Africa are forecast to travel to Europe and 14% to the Middle East. As in 2016 and 2030 the airports of the Middle East are major transfer points of passengers between Europe and Asia. A share of 27% of air passengers is forecast to travel between the Middle East and Asia and 17% between the Middle East and Europe, which are more or less the values of 2016 and 2030. The higher-than-average shares of intraregional travel of the large markets of North America and Asia (87% and 93%, respectively) will remain virtually constant in 2040 compared to 2030 and 2016. Thus as expected, there is no significant change in the traffic structure between world regions, which is no surprise given the share of interregional traffic of only 15%. Table 10.8 shows the average growth rates of annual passenger volume for the time period 2030 40. A CAGR of 3.1% is forecast for the global mean value, and there is significant variation between world regions. As for the period 2016 30, traffic of Africa, the Middle East and Asia grows with the highest annual growth rates of 3.6%, 3.5% and 3.3%, respectively; however, they are expected to decrease substantially compared to the previous period. Africa and the Middle East decline by 0.8% and 1.0% points, respectively, and Asia by even 1.6% points. In particular, Asia’s limited airport capacity plays a major role. Africa and the Middle East suffer from a capacity shortage in Asia, while there are no capacity constraints at their own airports. As in the previous period the global mean value of 3.1% is mainly a result of the forecast strong passenger volume growth of the Asian region, as the other two large regions, Europe and North America, are expected to grow much slower. The highest growth rate of Table 10.8 is 3.8% and can be found for air travel between South America and the Middle East, followed by a value of 3.7% for air travel between Africa and the Middle East and South America, respectively, as well as within the African region. The common feature of these relations is that airport capacity constraints play no role. In contrast, the three lowest growth rates can be found for European North American (2.5%), European domestic (2.6%) and European Asian as well as North American domestic (2.7%) routes. In particular, the Europe domestic figure has a considerable impact on the global mean value, as it still accounts for about 18% of the forecast global passenger volume in 2040. Nevertheless, these markets are all plagued by a capacity shortage at their main airports. Fig. 10.8 shows the unaccommodated annual passenger volume in 2040 by world region. The unaccommodated passenger volume sums up to almost 256 million passengers worldwide in 2040 and is 2.6% of the forecast global unconstrained passenger volume. This is a substantial increase compared to 2030, both in absolute as well as in relative terms. The largest levels of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2040 can be found in Asia (156.6 million), North America (63.2 million) and Europe (22.2 million), as airport capacity
Unaccommodated annual passenger volume
Million
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
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180 160 140 120
100 80 60 40 20 0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.8 Forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for the year 2040 by world region; global sum is 286.7 million passengers.
constraints become increasingly more important, and aircraft size developments cannot fully offset the capacity shortage. As in 2030 intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume has the highest share of total unaccommodated passenger volume in these regions (53% for Europe, 88% for North America and 93% for Asia). On the other hand, intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume does not exist in Africa, the Middle East and the Southwest Pacific and only marginally in South America, as more or less sufficient airport capacity is expected in 2040. Unaccommodated passenger volume in these regions is mainly a result of insufficient airport capacity in other regions and sums up to about 13.4 million passengers in 2040. However, we expect things to change beyond 2040, as can be seen exemplarily by the South American region. Here, airports such as Sao Paulo Congonhas (CGH), Mexico City (MEX) and Cancun (CUN) already suffer from direct capacity constraints; however, their share of unaccommodated demand is 1% or even less. Table 10.9 displays the forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for 2040 by world region. Asia (4.1%), North America (3.2%) and Middle East (1.8%) show the highest values, while Africa (0.4%), South America (0.5%) and the Southwest Pacific (0.2%) have low shares of unaccommodated demand, which can be found with the exception of South America exclusively in interregional passenger volume. The situation of the Middle East worsens compared to 2030. While there is still no capacity shortage at airports of the Middle East, the forecast share of
TABLE 10.9 Forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for the year 2040 by world region; global mean value is 3.0%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
0.0
8.1
1.0
0.0
2.5
0.0
0.0
Asia
8.1
4.1
4.3
5.1
2.7
0.0
1.3
Europe
1.0
4.3
0.7
1.7
4.9
0.8
n.a.
Middle East
0.0
5.1
1.7
0.0
1.8
0.0
0.0
North America
2.5
2.7
4.9
1.8
3.2
1.9
2.0
South America
0.0
0.0
0.8
0.0
1.9
0.2
0.0
Southwest Pacific
0.0
1.3
n.a.
0.0
2.0
0.0
0.0
Ø
0.4
4.1
1.1
1.8
3.2
0.5
0.2
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
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unaccommodated demand rises from 0.4% to 1.8% in 2030, in particular due to an increasing capacity shortage at Asian airports, but limited airport capacity in Europe and North America play a role as well.
10.4.2 Flight volume
Million
Fig. 10.9 presents the flight volume forecast for 2040 by world region. More than 52 million flights are forecast for the year 2040 globally, which means that the global flight volume grows by almost 15% compared to 2030; however, this is a considerably lower value compared to the period 2016 30 (129%). The largest regions in terms of flight volume are Asia (17.2 million), North America (13.9 million) and Europe (11.3 million). Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific account for around 10.1 million flights in 2040. Ninety-one per cent of the traffic is forecast to have flight origins and destinations within world regions, which is virtually the same as in 2016 and 2030. As a result, 47.5 million flights depart and arrive within the same region. The relative intraregional distribution of flight volume is expected to remain more or less the same as in 2016 and 2030. With the exception of Africa and the Middle East, the share of intraregional flights is between 87% (South America) and 95% (Asia). The Middle East and Africa are well below average, and they are expected to have a share of about 55% and 76%, respectively, which is virtually the same as in 2016 and 2030. 20 18
Annual flight volume
16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.9 Forecast annual flight volume for the year 2040 by world region; global sum is 52.7 million flights.
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
Table 10.10 illustrates the annual flight volume growth rates for the time period from 2030 to 2040. A CAGR of 1.4% is forecast globally; however, there is considerable variation between the different world regions. Asia, the Middle East and South America each have the highest annual growth rates of 1.6%. Europe and North America display forecast growth rates of 1.1% and 1.2%, respectively, which are well below average. Africa and the Southwest Pacific show values each of 1.3% and 1.5%, respectively. The highest forecast values can be found for South America Middle East and Southwest Pacific Middle East (2.3%). These markets do not have a shortage of airport capacity. On the other hand, the lowest value of 1.0% refers to Europe North America and Africa Europe, which is a result of the declining GDP growth rates that are expected until 2040 and increasing capacity problems at airports.
10.4.3 Aircraft size Table 10.11 displays the forecast values of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2040. On average, aircraft size is forecast to increase from 152 in 2030 to 179 passengers per flight in 2040 worldwide. It is expected to be clearly above average for Asia (214) and the Middle East (242), while the values for Africa (167), North America (139), South America (158) and the Southwest Pacific (148) are forecast to be well below average. The value of Europe (180) is very close to the global mean value. As in 2016 and 2030 intraregional flights carry on average a lower number of passengers per flight compared to interregional flights in 2040. The lowest number of passengers per flight is forecast for flights within North America (130), the Southwest Pacific (131) and Africa (142). On the other hand, the highest number of passengers per flight is forecast for interregional flights, such as Middle East Southwest Pacific (490), Middle East North America (422) and South America Middle East (396). Table 10.12 displays the forecast annual growth rates of aircraft size for the time period 2030 40. The global mean value is 1.7%, meaning that average growth rates slow down substantially compared to the previous period despite increasing capacity constraints, because there are upper limits to aircraft size and the rate at which it can be increased. This reveals the dilemma of the Asian region. Forecast demand growth for 2030 and 2040 is high, and the level of demand is already quite substantial in 2016 and 2030. However, in the long run, there are both limits to expanding airport capacity and to increasing aircraft size, thus leading to high levels of unaccommodated demand. While increasing aircraft size, typically, is easier than expanding airport capacity by adding new runways, there are still upper limits to aircraft size and the rate at which it can be increased, as a comparison of Tables 10.12 and 10.6 illustrates by the decreasing growth rates.
TABLE 10.10 Forecast annual flight volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2030 40 by world region; global mean value is 1.4%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
1.3
1.3
1.0
1.7
1.1
1.3
1.4
Asia
1.3
1.7
1.1
1.4
1.5
1.7
1.7
Europe
1.0
1.1
1.1
1.4
1.0
1.6
n.a.
Middle East
1.7
1.4
1.4
1.7
1.8
2.3
2.3
North America
1.1
1.5
1.0
1.8
1.2
1.2
1.4
South America
1.3
1.7
1.6
2.3
1.2
1.7
1.8
Southwest Pacific
1.4
1.7
n.a.
2.3
1.4
1.8
1.5
Ø
1.3
1.6
1.1
1.6
1.2
1.6
1.5
TABLE 10.11 Forecast of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2040 by world region; global mean value is 179. Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Africa
142
344
245
250
361
314
336
Asia
344
209
290
336
339
318
292
Europe
245
290
167
285
331
395
n.a.
Middle East
250
336
285
185
422
396
490
North America
361
339
331
422
130
193
358
South America
314
318
395
396
193
150
346
Southwest Pacific
336
292
n.a.
490
358
346
131
Ø
167
214
180
242
139
158
148
TABLE 10.12 Forecast average aircraft size growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2030 40 by world region; global mean value is 1.7%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
2.4
2.2
2.0
1.9
2.1
2.3
2.1
Asia
2.2
1.7
1.7
2.1
1.3
1.7
1.4
Europe
2.0
1.7
1.5
1.7
1.5
1.5
n.a.
Middle East
1.9
2.1
1.7
1.8
1.4
1.5
1.2
North America
2.1
1.3
1.5
1.4
1.5
1.8
1.4
South America
2.3
1.7
1.5
1.5
1.8
1.8
1.7
Southwest Pacific
2.1
1.4
n.a.
1.2
1.4
1.7
1.5
Ø
2.2
1.7
1.5
1.8
1.5
1.8
1.5
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
Looking at the seven world regions and their interdependencies, Africa (2.2%), Asia (1.7%), the Middle East (1.8%) and South America (1.8%) show above-average values, while the average aircraft size development of Europe (1.5%), North America (1.5%) and the Southwest Pacific (1.5%) is below average. The three highest values are 2.4% for Africa domestic, 2.3% for Africa South America and 2.2% for Asia Africa, while the lowest values are 1.2% for Southwest Pacific Middle East, 1.3% for North America Asia and 1.4% for Middle East North America, Asia Southwest Pacific and North America Southwest Pacific.
10.4.4 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2040 Table 10.13 shows the top 20 airports regarding unaccommodated passenger demand volume in 2040. Among these 20 airports are 14 from Asia, one from Europe, one from the Middle East and four from North America. There are 14 airports suffering from direct capacity constraints (capacity utilisation of 100%), that is five more compared to 2030. Dubai (DXB) and Singapore Changi (SIN) airports are examples which still do not have a capacity shortage but suffer from capacity constraints at destination airports. Unaccommodated demand of these airports is expected to total between 5.7 and 6.3 million passengers in 2040, which is 2.6% and 3.8%, respectively, of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume for 2040. This is quite substantial, given the fact that these airports do not suffer from direct capacity constraints. Overall, unaccommodated passenger volume of airports with capacity reserves but suffering from indirect capacity constraints has increased substantially compared to 2030. Delhi Indira Gandhi (DEL) is expected to be the airport with the highest unaccommodated demand volume of 46.0 million passengers, followed by Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji (BOM, 42.1 million) and Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta (CGK, 41.8 million). Thus the top three airports are exclusively from Asia and their unaccommodated passenger volume represents 22.4%, 25.5% and 21.5% respectively, of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume in 2040. As in 2030, most of the unaccommodated passenger volume is still concentrated on a small number of airports in 2040. The top ten airports account for about 49% and the top 20 for about 59% of the unaccommodated passenger volume worldwide. As for 2030 the values of Table 10.13 need to be divided by a value of two to allow comparisons with Fig. 10.8, because passengers are counted twice in Table 10.13, that means arriving and departing passengers per airport. As indicated earlier in the book, unaccommodated passenger volume in 2040 is only a small part of the total forecast passenger volume; however, it is much more important for particular world regions and airports. The main reason for this development is that mitigation measures such as expanding airport capacity and increasing aircraft size increasingly
TABLE 10.13 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2040. No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
1
DEL
Delhi Indira Gandhi
599
159
265
46.0
22.4
100.0
2
BOM
Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji
447
123
276
42.1
25.5
100.0
3
CGK
Jakarta Soekarno Hatta
629
152
242
41.8
21.5
100.0
4
ATL
Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson
974
195
200
33.6
14.7
100.0
5
LHR
London Heathrow
523
144
275
25.2
14.9
100.0
6
ORD
Chicago O’Hare
945
144
153
20.7
12.5
100.0
7
BLR
Bengaluru Kempegowda
274
65
237
17.6
21.3
100.0
8
KUL
Kuala Lumpur
593
140
236
9.4
6.3
100.0
9
MNL
Manila Ninoy Aquino
442
113
256
7.7
6.4
100.0
10
LAX
Los Angeles
814
167
205
7.1
4.1
100.0
11
DFW
Dallas/Fort Worth
881
130
148
6.1
4.4
100.0 (Continued )
TABLE 10.13 (Continued) No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
12
DXB
Dubai
669
241
360
6.3
2.6
94.8
13
SIN
Singapore Changi
599
146
244
5.7
3.8
73.0
14
HYD
Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi
211
51
240
5.5
9.8
42.8
15
SGN
Tan Son Nhat
430
103
240
5.3
4.9
100.0
16
MAA
Chennai
261
60
229
5.2
8.0
66.2
17
CCU
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
207
52
252
5.0
8.8
55.1
18
BKK
Bangkok Suvarnabhumi
547
141
257
4.3
2.9
100.0
19
SZX
Shenzhen Bao’an
547
124
227
4.1
3.2
100.0
20
SUB
Juanda
330
66
199
3.8
5.5
62.6
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
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reach their limits regarding their maximum level and growth rate, respectively, despite the fact that factors driving passenger demand volume growth decline slightly between 2030 and 2040, which releases some pressure from airport capacities.
10.5 Assessing mitigation strategies In discussing general strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints, we have stated from the outset that each constrained airport has specific capacity problems and that solutions to capacity problems vary from airport to airport and from region to region, depending on the severity and type of the capacity bottleneck, the financial situation of the airport and the regulatory framework of the region or state, which the airport operator has to take into account in planning for the future. Our intention has been to analyse, on a global level, measures and options that have been successfully applied at airports and, therefore, may be recommended for further use. On the contrary, theoretical discussions, which do not contribute to reducing the capacity problem, should not be recommended accordingly. We have seen that a whole range of technological, investment and noninvestment options does theoretically exist, and furthermore, that a spectrum of supply and demand management measures may be applied, ranging from pure administrative measures such as regulations, hybrid measures, such as slot coordination with secondary slot trading, to market-based options, such as congestion pricing schemes and primary slot trading. In Table 5.1, we have shown a typology of these mitigation measures, whereby some of them have not yet been commonly applied, such as congestion pricing, since landing fees are regulated in many countries. We have concluded that rerouting of flights to secondary and less congested airports has been regarded by airlines as an undesirable measure and has not been widely used, in particular not at hubs, because of the interrelationship of incoming and outgoing flights. Of similar nature is the temporal shifting of flights to off-peak periods at the same airport. Nevertheless, this measure has been applied by slot coordinators at Level 3 airports, when airlines requested slots at peak times. These slots, however, were only available at off-peak times. The analysis has further shown that two mitigation measures new runways as an investment option and increasing seat capacity per flight as an operational measure have proven to be more effective than the other measures. The forecasts of passenger and flight volumes have therefore incorporated these measures, in addition to the prevailing measures of utilising runways and raising load factors as much as possible when and where needed. In the following, we discuss the forecast results with an emphasis on evaluating the absolute and relative effects of employing larger aircraft here measured in passengers per flight and enhancing runway utilisation and runway capacity enlargements.
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10.5.1 How do increasing aircraft size and adding new runways contribute to airport capacity improvements up to 2030 and 2040? Passenger volumes on links between airports and regions were forecast in a first phase in relation to mainly socio-economic factors. Future passenger volumes are thus reflecting the market demand without being constrained by a lack of infrastructure capacity. The methodological approach of forecasting passenger flows and flight volumes between airports and regions was conceived in a following phase in such a way that forecast horizon year capacities were estimated and future airport flight volumes in particular were mirrored against capacities. The forecast results have to be interpreted therefore as ‘capacity constrained’ estimates, which do not include passenger and flight volumes that cannot be accommodated due to bottlenecks caused by airports with insufficient capacity. We show, however, the unaccommodated demand as well, in order to provide information on the amount of future capacity constraint. Depending on the shortage of capacity reserves and/or the amount of unaccommodated flights, runway utilisation was intensified up to airport-specific limits, and load factor as well as seat capacity of flights were increased up to route type-specific limits. While the measures of increasing runway utilisation and load factors contribute rather modestly to mitigating capacity problems at constrained airports due to the already high degree of runway and seat capacity utilisation, higher seat capacities of aircraft and additional runways have proven to be effective measures for overcoming capacity shortages at these airports, which are in many instances major airports, in particular hubs with the largest traffic volumes. At non-constrained airports often secondary airports and those with mainly origin destination traffic increasing runway utilisation and raising load factors of flights in addition to employing aircraft with higher seat capacity are measures of first choice and contribute to overcoming future constraint situations to a higher degree than at already congested airports. In any case, all these measures have been applied in forecasting passenger and flight volumes of airports. In the following section, we present those forecast results for 2030 and 2040 which deal with the absolute and relative capacity gain due to increasing primarily passengers per flight, on the one hand, and improving runway utilisation and enlarging runway capacity, on the other. The measures of seat capacity per flight and load factor have been taken care of implicitly in the forecast by applying the product of these variables, that is, the number of passengers per flight.
10.5.1.1 Up to 2030 As presented and commented upon in the previous chapters, the forecast of passenger and flight volumes yields among others the following global forecast results for the year 2030: G G
flight volume: 45.8 million (2016: 35.5 million) flight volume growth 2030/16: 129%, 1.8% p.a.
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passenger volume: 6.9 billion (2016: 4.0 billion) passenger volume growth 2030/16: 176%, 4.1% p.a. unaccommodated passenger volume: 49.4 million total (unconstrained) passenger volume:6.963 billion
Regarding the mitigation measures, the following forecast results were obtained for the time period 2016 to 2030: G
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capacity gain by more passengers per flight (average aircraft size in 2016: 111 passengers per flight, in 2030: 152 passengers per flight): 1765 million passengers capacity gain by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 1220 million passengers capacity gain share by more passengers per flight: 59% capacity gain share by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 41%
While the number of passengers transported in the global network increases by 76% from 2016 to 2030, the flight volume grows by only 29%. The growth difference results from the fact that the average seat capacity per flight multiplied by the load factor grows from 111 to 152 passengers per flight. In 2030 almost three billion passengers more than in 2016 will use the planes, and 59% of the passenger volume growth (1.8 billion passengers) can be accounted for by higher seat capacity and higher load factors per flight, while 41% (1.2 billion passengers) are attributable to higher capacity due to more runways and higher utilisation of runways. It is, thus, interesting to note that in our forecast, the measure of deploying larger aircraft will provide more additional capacity than better utilisation of runways and new runway capacity. The improvement of these measures is also one factor responsible for just a relatively small number of unaccommodated passengers (49 million or 0.7% of the total unconstrained passenger volume) in 2030. It should be added that the forecast methodology has not been conceived so as to produce biased results by preferring one type of measure against others. The realisation probabilities of single measures are primarily based on empirical functions rather than on scenario-type assumptions. The current situation of air transport demand and traffic supply varies from country to country and from world region to world region. It is therefore advisable to not only focus on global results but also to study regional forecast outcomes. Here, we concentrate again on the capacity gain due to increasing aircraft size, which means passengers per flight, and higher runway utilisation and capacity, which means more runways. In Figs 10.10 and 10.11, the regional distribution of capacity gain is shown; in Fig. 10.10 due to more passengers per flight and in Fig. 10.11 due to higher runway utilisation and capacity. Both figures give the capacity gain in terms of additional passengers served at airports as a consequence of realising the capacity
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FIGURE 10.10 Capacity gain by employing larger aircraft (that means more passengers per flight), measured in annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2030 by region; global sum is 1765 million passengers.
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FIGURE 10.11 Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and runway enlargements measured in annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2030 by region; global sum is 1220 million passengers.
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shortage mitigating measures. The scales of the vertical axes are the same in both figures so that the effectiveness of the two types of measures can be compared directly. As passenger volumes vary greatly between the world regions so do the capacity gains. The passenger volumes of the three major regions of Asia, Europe and North America contribute with 5.7 billion (around 82%) to the global volume of 6.9 billion passengers in 2030. The capacity gains in these major world regions are corresponding high. Asia is the region with the highest passenger volume of 2.6 billion passengers with a passenger growth between 2016 and 2030 of 1.3 billion, of which 58% are handled by larger aircraft with higher load factors and 42% by better runway utilisation and capacity enlargements at Asian airports. Passenger growth in Europe and North America is, with 586 million and 563 million passengers respectively, less than half as large as in Asia. The passenger volumes are 1.6 and 1.5 billion passengers in 2030. In Europe and North America, 62% of the passenger growth is realised through more passengers per flight and 38% through higher runway utilisation and capacity enlargements. The capacity gain caused by employing larger aircraft is, thus, in the three major regions as well as in the other regions, more effective than the measure of higher runway utilisation and more runways. While airlines are constantly enlarging their fleets with aircraft with higher seat capacity and succeed in raising load factors, major airports, in particular, have problems building new runways or even new airports. The measure of transporting more passengers per flight has proven to be in the past and will be in future the single most effective non-investment measure of mitigating airport capacity constraints. According to the forecast the average number of passengers per flight will grow from 111 in 2016 by 41 to 152 passengers per flight in 2030.
10.5.1.2 Between 2030 and 2040 We first present the main global forecast results in order to better relate the capacity gain to total passenger volumes of the year 2040. The forecast of passenger and flight volumes yields among others the following global forecast results for the year 2040: G G
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flight volume: 52.7 million (2016: 35.5 million) flight volume growth 2040/30: 115%, 1.4% p.a.; 2040/16: 148%, 1.7% p.a. passenger volume: 9.4 billion (2016: 4.0 billion) passenger volume growth 2040/30: 136%, 3.1% p.a.; 2040/16: 1138%, 3.7% p.a. unaccommodated passenger volume: 255.5 million total (unconstrained) passenger volume: 9.630 billion
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Regarding the mitigation measures, the following forecast results were obtained for the time period 2030 to 2040: G
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capacity gain by more passengers per flight (average aircraft size in 2030: 152 passengers per flight, in 2040: 179 passengers per flight): 1375 million passengers (2030: 1765 million) capacity gain by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 1079 million passengers (2030: 1220 million) capacity gain share by more passengers per flight: 56% capacity gain share by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 44%
Global flight volume will increase further by 15% in the second forecast period from 2030 to 2040; passenger volume will grow even more by 36% to about 9.4 billion passengers. Compared with the base year 2016, the overall demand is forecast to more than double and grow by 138%. Compared with 2030, another 2.5 billion passengers will use the air transport system in 2040 and will fly in even larger aircraft; the average number of passengers per flight will continue to rise to almost 180 passengers. About 56% of the passenger growth can be attributed to the effect of larger aircraft with higher load factors and 44% to the measure of higher runway utilisation and more runway capacity. As in the previous forecast period, the capacity gain stemming from more passengers per flight will be higher than the runway utilisation and enlargements effect, however, with a relative gain of the latter effect. The number of unaccommodated passengers will grow disproportionately to more than 255 million passengers, accounting for around 2.6% of the global passenger volume. Although this share seems to be rather small due to the effectiveness of the mitigation measures applied, capacity shortages especially at major airports will become more severe. As has been shown in discussing the forecast results in detail, major airports will have much higher shares of unaccommodated passengers than secondary airports because the investment options are typically difficult to realise at high-volume airports, as has already been the case in the past. The capacity gain due to increasing aircraft size, here passengers per flight, and better runway utilisation and capacity extensions (that means more runways) by world region is shown in Figs 10.12 and 10.13. The passenger volume of the three major world regions, Asia, Europe and North America, will grow to more than 7.6 billion passengers; the volume share of these regions will slightly lose in relative importance and decrease to 81%. While the passenger volume of Asia continues to grow disproportionately high to 3.7 billion passengers, the volumes of Europe and North America will grow at a disproportionately slower pace to around two billion each. In all three regions, growth rates will be lower than in the first forecast period to 2030.
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FIGURE 10.12 Capacity gain by employing larger aircraft (that means more passengers per flight) measured in annual passenger volume between 2030 and 2040 by region; global sum is 1375 million passengers.
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FIGURE 10.13 Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and enlargements measured in annual passenger volume between 2030 and 2040 by region; global sum is 1079 million passengers.
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Average aircraft size and the degree of capacity shortage vary in all seven regions, however, the relative mitigation effect of increasing aircraft size, measured in passengers per flight, will be stronger than the measure of utilising runways more intensively and building more runways in all regions, except in the Southwest Pacific, where the aircraft size effect at 46% is lower than the runway effect. While the aircraft size measure contributes with 56% to the total capacity constraint mitigation worldwide, this measure at 64% is highest in Africa, followed by 61% in Europe, 58% in North America, 55% in the Middle East and 54% in Asia. The reasons for the variation of these mitigation effects are most likely to be found in local and country-specific conditions of transport policy and airport circumstances, such as varying airport size and degree of airport congestion. In the following section, we take a more detailed look at the relationship between flight volume and aircraft size and the development of this relationship at airports from 2016 to 2040 in all world regions.
10.5.2 General mitigation measures in world regions The question is as follows: can we draw some general conclusions from the analysis in the global network and in world region networks and give recommendations on capacity restraint mitigation strategies? Clearly, airportspecific recommendations regarding the enlargement of capacity can be deduced only from an analysis of future needs of capacity of that specific airport. On the other hand, the driving factor of employing larger aircraft lies within the strategic planning of airlines, and this measure affects the capacity needs of airports with hardly any possibility for them to interfere and influence this process. The capacity planning of airports concentrates more on the investment option of enlarging infrastructure capacity. Since both system partners airlines and airports affect future capacity needs of airports, there may be a case for a combined airport-specific, as well as a general capacity planning, strategy. Given this hypothesis, we want to derive some general recommendations on capacity mitigation strategies. Before looking at mitigation strategies, we want to highlight the different effects of the two optional mitigation types, the aircraft size and the runway measure, on the relative capacity gain. Fig. 10.14 shows the relationships between capacity gain and aircraft size growth (including higher load factors) and enlargement of runway capacity (including higher runway utilisation by more aircraft movements). As can be seen, there is a linear relationship between capacity gain and rising aircraft size. The more passengers are carried per flight the higher is the capacity gain, with the result that the throughput of a runway increases in terms of passengers carried per hour without the need to increase runway capacity in terms of flights per hour. There is a great probability that the linear relationship does not hold forever. At some point, in the future, aircraft
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FIGURE 10.14 Comparing capacity gains achieved by increasing the number of runways at an airport and by increasing aircraft size.
capacity will most likely grow more slowly until there comes a limit of aircraft size, based on technical and/or economic reasons. In our forecast, however, we do not yet see such saturation tendencies. The pace of employing larger aircraft will slow down somewhat in the second forecast period from 2030 to 2040; however, due to the fact that some capacity bottlenecks will continue to exist and others may develop, the average size of aircraft will increase from 111 passengers per flight in 2016 to 152 in 2030 and continue to grow to 179 passengers per flight in 2040. The effect of enlarging runway capacity is quite different (see upper function). Adding a new runway offers a capacity gain of around 40 flight movements per hour, if the airport is a single-runway airport and both runways can be operated independently. The relative capacity gain amounts, in such a case, to around 100%. Since the vast majority of airports worldwide have only one runway, such an investment would yield a significant growth in throughput in terms of flights per hour. The more runways an airport has the smaller becomes the relative gain in capacity by adding another runway, as has been explained in Chapter 7, Modelling future airport capacity and capacity utilisation (see Table 7.4). For example, an airport already operating with four runways, as we find often in North America, will gain only about 20% of the capacity of a single runway by adding a new runway. The option of enlarging runway capacity loses importance with the number of runways in operation and traffic volume, because of the growing complexity of flight operations, until the marginal benefit diminishes almost completely. The runway
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option is, thus, primarily a first choice of airports with only one or a few runways. We have seen in the past and can also see in the forecast that, in particular, major airports with high traffic volumes and a hub function are often confronted with the need to raise the capacity and, at the same time, have great problems pursuing such projects. Taking these circumstances into consideration, we have to admit that in a probabilistic sense the relative gain in adding capacity by new runways becomes less realistic. The effect of the lower realisation probability has been at least in an abstract form accounted for in the lower function of Fig. 10.14. For the airport population as a whole, the relative gain in capacity will diminish fast when these enlargement measures are concentrated on major airports, which already have a high runway capacity. Their chances of realising new runway capacity are in general relatively small as compared with secondary and smaller airports; for the former the option of being served with larger aircraft will offer relatively more benefits. Having discussed the different effects of the two types of mitigation measures in general, we will now identify the position of airports worldwide and in world regions with respect to average aircraft size and flight volume at these airports in 2016 and as forecast for 2030 and 2040, and derive some general mitigation strategies for airports in each world region, depending on these two characteristics. Fig. 10.15 shows the distribution of all airports
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FIGURE 10.15 Global classification of airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of global aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of global passenger volume).
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regarding their traffic volume (vertical axis) and average aircraft size, which means passengers per flight (horizontal axis). Each point in the diagram represents aircraft movements and average aircraft size data of a specific airport for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040. The distribution of airports shows that, by far, most of the airports are situated in the low range of flight volume, which means from very small volumes to around 200,000 movements per year over the whole range of average aircraft sizes to around 400 passengers per flight. A small number of airports will, in future years, reach volumes of up to one million movements and even more with aircraft sizes between around 120 and 250 passengers per flight. The diagram is divided into four quadrants, separated by a horizontal line at a value of 200,000 aircraft movements and a vertical line at 111 passengers per flight. The volume dividing line has been selected as a practical annual service volume of a single runway. The capacity of a runway may be higher, say around 240,000 movements, but the limit of 200,000 corresponds with a service volume that can be handled with a high level of service. The vertical line represents the average aircraft size of 111 passengers in 2016. Airports in these quadrants are characterised by certain ranges of flight volume and aircraft size. Airports with small flight volumes and aircraft can be found in quadrant I. Airports with small traffic volumes, but with higher numbers of passengers per flight, are in quadrant II, whereas airports with greater flight volumes as well as aircraft size are located in quadrant III. Finally, airports with high volumes and rather small aircraft are in quadrant IV. The general mitigation strategies vary with the position of airports regarding their volume and aircraft size. While airports in quadrant I handled, in 2016, 22% of the global passenger demand and 31% of the flight volume, their relative importance will go down with the growth of traffic in future. In 2030 the airports remaining in this category will handle only 7% of the passenger demand and 15% of the traffic; this trend will continue to the year 2040. Airports in quadrant I would take full advantage of both mitigation types, that is increasing aircraft size as well as runway capacity, provided that they have the choice of realising these options. As mentioned above, the investment option can be proactively pursued by airport operators, whereas the aircraft size option depends on the fleet and network strategy of airlines serving the airport. The percentage of airports of this type with capacity problems is compared with larger airports rather small. Airports in quadrant II handle larger aircraft, however, rather small traffic volumes. These airports will gain in importance; their traffic share will rise from 27% in 2016 to 34% in 2030, while their passenger volume share will rise from 31% to 36%. In the following period, from 2030 to 2040, their traffic share will not further increase. About one-third of the total traffic will thus be handled by airports in this quadrant. These airports would primarily benefit from enlarging runway capacity. A new runway would double the capacity if the new runway could be realised so that flight operations on
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each runway can be managed independently from each other. Increasing aircraft size would be a secondary option, especially for those airports with average aircraft sizes in the range of 120 200 passengers per flight. Airports with higher traffic volumes and large average aircraft size belong to a higher percentage to those with capacity problems. Airports in quadrant III form this category and mitigation strategies are often needed here more than at airports in other quadrants. In 2016 airports of this category handled a traffic share of 29%, and in 2030 their share will rise to 50%. Their importance will continue to grow until 2040, when they will handle a traffic share of 55%. The passenger volume share goes up correspondingly from 37% to 60% in 2040. This group of airports will be, thus, the most important group. Most of the airports handle aircraft ranging in their size between 120 and 230 passengers per flight; hence, a gradual increase of aircraft size might be the most beneficial strategy to cope with capacity shortages. For airports with traffic volumes of below around 400,000 movements per year, an investment in a new runway may be an option, too, especially if their average aircraft size already exceeds around 230 passengers per flight. For airports with very high traffic volumes, new runways provide a relatively small additional value. A solution may rather be to open a new airport in the same agglomeration, as is the case in Beijing. In such a case the full capacity gain may be realised by the additional runway system. The airports in quadrant IV handle high traffic volumes with aircraft of rather small size of below 111 passengers per flight. There are only relatively few airports of this type, and as can be seen in Fig. 10.15, their traffic share was very small in 2016 and is diminishing in future. Their first mitigation strategy would be to handle more and more aircraft of larger size, thereby increasing the passenger throughput per runway without raising the flight volume correspondingly. Since the occurrence of airports of this type will be negligible in future, mitigation strategies would not really contribute to solving the global capacity problem. As we have seen, airports with high traffic volumes, as well as aircraft with many passengers on board (in quadrant III), represent both the most important group as measured by their traffic share of the global traffic, as well as the most problematic ones, since they have the highest share of airports with highly utilised infrastructure with partly severe capacity constraints. Solutions to mitigate the capacity problem vary, certainly from airport to airport. As a general strategy, we would propose, first, a further increase of aircraft size and, second, new runway capacity for airports with a small number of runways and, for airports with a complex runway system, new capacity in the form of a new airport nearby. We have to state, however, that for a series of airports of this group the proposed strategies may be out of the question due to local and political constraints. The second most important airport group consists of airports with traffic volumes below 200,000 annual aircraft movements and aircraft with a size
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exceeding 111 passengers per flight (in quadrant II). The general mitigation strategy would be an investment into additional runway capacity and, only second, for airports with relatively small aircraft of up to 200 passengers per flight, more flights with more passenger capacity. Here again, new runways may be not a feasible solution in many instances for airport-specific reasons, and airports have to rely on non-investment solutions such as a growth of average aircraft size. After examination of the global development, we now analyse airport strategies in world regions since airport sizes, developmental conditions and traffic growth patterns vary from region to region. In addition, the mitigation strategies proposed may be better tailored to the needs of airports in each region. Africa is a continent with a rather low air traffic volume of nearly 1.1 million flights on almost 390 airports in 2016. This is forecast to grow above average to more than 1.4 million flights in 2030 and further to 1.6 million flights in 2040. Fig. 10.16 shows the distribution of African airports regarding their aircraft movements and passengers per flight numbers in 2016, 2030 and 2040. Quite in contrast to the airport size structure in the global network, 60% of the traffic of all airports in Africa has been handled in 2016 by small airports with low traffic volumes and numbers of passengers per flight below the global average of 111 passengers (in quadrant I), with a passenger share
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FIGURE 10.16 Classification of African airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of African aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at African airports).
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of almost 50%. Due to the traffic growth foreseen, airports will partly move into quadrant II and handle more aircraft movements with more passengers per flight. In 2016 30% of the traffic in Africa was handled by airports in this group. This share will double in 2030 and further grow to 66% in 2040, when these airports will handle almost three quarters of the passenger volume of Africa. Airports with high traffic volumes and high numbers of passengers per flight in quadrant III will gain in importance as well but will not reach a traffic share of all airports of more than 18%. The traffic importance of African airports in quadrant IV with high traffic volumes, but with small aircraft is very small and negligible in future. For airports with capacity constraints in Africa, which are in quadrant I, mitigation strategies could be new runways and/or increasing aircraft size, since most of these airports are rather small, most likely with one runway, and being served with aircraft of low seat capacity. Two example airports are depicted in Fig. 10.16, Johannesburg (JNB) and Nairobi (NBO); JNB is the largest airport in Africa with slightly more than 200,000 passengers in 2016 and equipped with two parallel runways, whereas NBO is a mediumsized airport with around 100,000 passengers and one runway. Both airports can grow on existing infrastructure without facing greater capacity problems in future. Passenger growth can be handled by aircraft growing in size correspondingly. The average number of passengers per flight in Africa was 96 in 2016; this figure is expected to grow to 134 in 2030, which is still well below the global average of 152 passengers. In 2016 Asia handled a traffic volume of 10.4 million flights on more than 920 airports, carrying 1.3 billion passengers. Each flight had on average 130 passengers on board, almost 20 passengers more than the global average. Asia has not only the highest traffic share of all regions but is also the region with the highest passenger volume growth of 4.9% p.a. between 2016 and 2030 so that the number of passengers will grow to more than 2.6 billion on 14.6 million flights. Demand will continue to grow until 2040 to almost 3.7 billion passengers. Outstanding examples of traffic size and growth are the two hub airports of Beijing, Capital City (PEK) and Daxing (PKX), which are shown among others in Fig. 10.17. Most of the airports in Asia are larger than those in Africa, and especially small airports in quadrant I play only a marginal role in handling traffic in future. The traffic share of airports with small traffic volumes and aircraft with high numbers of passengers per flight (in quadrant II) will decrease from 42% in 2016 to 39% in 2030 and further on to 35% in 2040, whereas the traffic share of airports with both high traffic volumes and flights with many passengers on board (in quadrant III) will grow to 56% in 2030 and to 62% in 2040. Airports in Asia are typically confronted with high traffic growth rates, as can be particularly seen in the example of the largest Asian airport Beijing Capital City (PEK) in 2016. The traffic will almost double from more than 600,000 aircraft movements in 2016 to almost 1.2 million in
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FIGURE 10.17 Classification of Asian airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of Asian aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at Asian airports).
2040, and most of the growth is accomplished by a new airport with sufficient runway capacity. Average aircraft size will also grow by 87, from 159 passengers to 246 passengers per flight, in the same period. PEK is an outstanding example of a large airport where a first choice strategy to mitigate capacity shortages would be to increase aircraft size further but, if possible, create new runway capacity by building a new airport (PKX). Given the strong growth of traffic in Asia, we would recommend for airports with limited runway capacity in quadrant II a new runway or two, and for airports with more capacity available (in quadrant III) a further increase of aircraft size. In both cases, however, we would not exclude the alternative strategy, which is larger aircraft for airports in quadrant II and new runways for airports in quadrant III as a secondary option. For airports with multiple runways, we do not recommend as a first choice new runway capacity on the same airport, but instead on a secondary airport in the same agglomeration, as the example of Beijing shows. Two other examples are shown in Fig. 10.17, the development of more typical airports of Osaka (ITM) and Jeju (CJU). Both airports have traffic volumes below the practical capacity of a single runway of 200,000 movements and participate in the traffic growth in Asia. Both airports can still handle the growing traffic by increasing average aircraft size without a need to realise an investment option. If capacity constraints become a problem, we would recommend a runway capacity extension as a first option.
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Europe is an important traffic region, too, with 685 airports and a traffic volume of 8.3 million flights in 2016. Some 980 million passengers were carried on these flights, which had an average aircraft size of 118 passengers. European airports are similarly distributed as Asian airports regarding traffic volume and average aircraft size. However, Europe does not have an airport as large as Beijing Capital City (PEK). The distribution and development of airports in Europe is shown in Fig. 10.18. Traffic at European airports was roughly equally distributed in 2016 over the three quadrants I III with about 30% each in 2016, although the passenger demand share grew from 21% at smaller airports to 34% at airports with volumes of less than 200,000 aircraft movements per year in quadrant II and to 40% at the large airports with more traffic and larger aircraft in quadrant III. Traffic share at small airports will diminish in future, while airports in quadrants II and III will take over and handle more and more traffic. Large airports with more flights of larger aircraft size will handle even more than airports in quadrant II, which still have rather small traffic volumes. Airports struggling with capacity constraints are mainly in quadrant III, such as two of the example airports: London Heathrow (LHR) and London Gatwick (LGW). Both airports are in need of substantial capacity growth, however, have not yet succeeded in realising new runway projects due to public resistance. Their traffic and aircraft size developments are shown in Fig. 10.18. According to the forecast, LHR will grow almost exclusively by aircraft size, while LGW will get a capacity extension and grow by traffic 1200
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2016: 35.4% (40.3%) 2030: 47.8% (52.2%) 2040: 51.3% (55.2%)
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FIGURE 10.18 Classification of European airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of European aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at European airports).
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volume as well as by aircraft size. With four runways, Frankfurt airport still has capacity reserves and can grow by traffic volume and aircraft size without additional runway capacity. Two other example airports of smaller size are depicted in Fig. 10.18, namely Geneva (GVA) and Stuttgart (STR), each with one runway. Both airports will grow without new runways in the forecast period by handling more aircraft with more passengers on board. Although the general recommendations derived on the global level apply to Europe as well, airports with capacity constraints in Europe have, in many instances, severe problems with enlarging capacity. We would recommend new runways for airports with capacity bottlenecks in quadrant II, but we admit, however, that the realisation chances are not great, if at all. This means that airports in Europe have primarily to rely on the growth of aircraft size in order to cope with further traffic growth. For capacity constrained airports with high traffic volumes and aircraft size (in quadrant III), we would recommend, first, a further increase of aircraft size. However, we would also recommend capacity growth, knowing the problems associated with investment proposals for European airports. It seems that airports in Europe of this type, and other types as well, are in a particularly difficult position to realise plans to add runway capacity because the population living around airports and local politics oppose such proposals, often successfully, on grounds of nuisance, noise and gaseous emissions. The Middle East region is, with 111 airports and a flight volume of 1.2 million, one of the smaller air traffic regions. As can be seen in Fig. 10.19, Dubai airport (DXB) stands out as a prominent airport, while most others are smaller and can be found mainly in quadrants II and III. While the relative traffic importance of smaller airports in quadrant II will remain the same with around 45% of all aircraft movements in the Middle East but with a declining importance of passenger demand, larger airports in quadrant III will take over and increase their share of traffic volume from 36% to 53% in 2040. As a general strategy for capacity constrained airports here, we would recommend raising the capacity by adding new runways, since average aircraft size is already above average in many instances. According to the forecast, DXB will grow from around 400,000 aircraft movements in 2016 to almost 670,000 movements in 2040. This growth will be realised through both new runway capacity as well as larger aircraft size. Average aircraft size will thereby increase further by about 140 passengers per flight, from around 220 to 360, a size reached by just a few large airports worldwide. Riyadh airport (RUH) has less than 200,000 movements and is only half as large as DXB. Here, traffic is expected to grow to almost 300,000 movements in 2040. To accomplish the traffic growth the airport will use both existing runways more intensively with aircraft which will grow in size from about 140 to around 220 passengers per flight. In 2016 North America had more than 1000 airports and a flight volume of ten million flights. It was almost as important a traffic region as Asia.
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FIGURE 10.19 Classification of airports of the Middle East according to mitigation strategies and their share of aircraft movements at airports of the Middle East for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at airports of the Middle East).
The passenger volume was greater in Asia with 1.3 billion passengers, more than in North America which had 0.9 billion passengers. The reason for the difference is the average aircraft size; on Asian flights, average aircraft size is highest with 130 passengers per flight, while in North America, only 91 passengers are on board, the lowest value of all regions. North America has mainly domestic US traffic with frequent services with rather small aircraft, whereas the Asian network is served with more international and medium to long range flights with higher seat capacity. The distribution and development of airports regarding their traffic volume and aircraft size in North America is shown in Fig. 10.20. Quite in contrast to the size distribution of airports in other regions, average aircraft size of North American airports varies mainly between 70 and 200 passengers per flight as can be seen in Fig. 10.20. North America also has a higher share of high-volume airports, with Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson (ATL) and Chicago O’Hare (ORD) reaching a threshold of almost one million aircraft movements in 2030 and 2040. While, for the time being, about three-quarters of the traffic in North America is handled by below-average sized aircraft at small- and large-volume airports, traffic volumes and average aircraft size will grow in future so that in 2040 almost two-thirds of the traffic is concentrated on larger airports in quadrant III. For the capacity constrained airports among them, especially for those with complex runway systems, we would recommend a further increase of aircraft size as the more
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FIGURE 10.20 Classification of North American airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of North American aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at North American airports).
efficient strategy, thus improving runway utilisation rather than raising infrastructure capacity. For smaller airports with capacity problems, infrastructure enlargements may be the better choice, if such options are feasible. The development of aircraft size and traffic volume is shown in Fig. 10.20 for three example airports: Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson (ATL), Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) and San Diego (SAN). While ATL and DFW are high-capacity airports with five and seven runways, respectively, SAN belongs to the 30 core airports of the United States, but with one runway only. All three airports have high capacity utilisation rates, whereby ATL is, with about 875,000 movements, operating at capacity level. Traffic volumes will increase in future, most of all in DFW and least in SAN. ATL will enlarge capacity by a new runway in order to cope with demand growth, although one would propose as a general rule for airports with complex runway systems a higher runway utilisation through larger aircraft size. ATL has five parallel runways, and adding another parallel runway would still bring a relatively great capacity increase. DFW has no capacity shortage to handle the future flight volume, while SAN, on the contrary, has no possibility of raising capacity but has to rely on larger aircraft size. South America has 530 airports and a traffic volume of 3.3 million flights in 2016. It is one of the smaller world regions. Traffic is expected to grow to 4.2 million flights in 2030 and to almost five million in 2040. Average aircraft size, with 99 passengers per flight in 2016, is below the global average of 111 and will remain below average in future with values of 133
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FIGURE 10.21 Classification of South American airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of South American aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at South American airports).
passengers in 2030 and 158 in 2040. The development of aircraft size and flight volume of each airport from 2016 to 2030 and 2040 is shown in Fig. 10.21. Most airports in South America have traffic volumes below 200,000 aircraft movements, volumes which can be handled by a single runway. Due to traffic growth the traffic share of small airports with average aircraft size below the average of 111 passengers per flight (in quadrant I) will go down from 52% to 14% in 2040, while the traffic share of airports with larger aircraft size (in quadrant II) will increase from 34% to 55% in 2040, and the traffic share of airports with both larger traffic volumes and aircraft size (in quadrant III) will rise from 8% to 31%. This means, on the other hand, that almost 70% of the South American traffic will be handled in future by rather small-volume airports. For those of them with capacity problems, a general mitigation measure of first choice would be to add another runway and, secondly, to increase runway utilisation by larger average aircraft size. The outstanding airport in South America is Mexico City (MEX) with more than 426,000 aircraft movements in 2016, which is expected to grow to around 681,000 movements in 2040 (see Fig. 10.21). The airport has been operating at a high capacity utilisation rate for years. To accomplish the future growth, MEX will need a substantial capacity enlargement, which is forecast to happen probably and better so by a secondary airport. Therefore the passenger growth will be realised by additional flights rather
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than by an increase of average aircraft size. It will grow from 97 in 2016 to around 143 passengers per flight in 2040, a value still below the South American average of 158 passengers. The long-term growth potential lies therefore in a stronger rise of average aircraft size. The metropolitan area Rio de Janeiro airport has two airports, Rio de Janeiro-Galeao (GIG) as an international airport and Rio de Janeiro Santos Dumont (SDU) for domestic traffic, primarily to Sao Paulo. SDU has a single runway and a traffic volume of around 100,000 aircraft movements (see Fig. 10.21). Traffic is expected to grow to 167,000 movements in 2040, which means that a new runway is not needed. The airport will handle the growing passenger demand mainly by increasing average aircraft size from around 100 passengers per flight to nearly 150 passengers. We see, in both airport examples, that the measure of enlarging infrastructure capacity will not be the solution to cope with growing passenger demand, but rather the option of increasing runway utilisation by larger aircraft size. The Southwest Pacific region with Australia as the main contributor is also one of the smaller traffic regions, with 401 airports and a traffic volume of 1.1 million flights in 2016. According to the forecast, traffic will grow to 1.5 million flights in 2030 and to 1.7 million in 2040. Average aircraft size in 2016 was 97 passengers per flight and thus 14 below the world average of 111, caused mainly by the small aircraft size on about one million domestic flights. This main measure of mitigating capacity shortages grows to about 128 passengers per flight in 2030 and to 148 in 2040 and remains, thereby, below the global average. The development of average aircraft size and traffic volume of each airport in the Southwest Pacific is shown in Fig. 10.22. As in other regions, most of the traffic in the Southwest Pacific is handled by small-volume airports of category I and II; in 2016 almost two-thirds of all flights operated from these airports. Airports with both small volumes and average aircraft size, in particular, will lose traffic in future, and airports with more passengers per flight and with larger volumes will gain correspondingly. Airports of categories II and III handled about half of the traffic in 2016; this share will rise to two-thirds in 2030 and to more than 70% in 2040. Since average aircraft size will not exceed 150 passengers per flight until 2040, and many airports handle traffic volumes of below 400,000 aircraft movements, both mitigation options may be potential candidates for airports with capacity problems, depending on the local situation regarding infrastructure enlargement possibilities. Airports with traffic volumes of below 200,000 aircraft movements would rather prefer a new runway in the case of a need for further runway capacity, while larger airports might look for more flights with more passengers on board, to improve runway utilisation further. Two example airports have been selected, the developments of which are shown in Fig. 10.22. Sydney (SYD) is the airport with the highest traffic volume (about 334,000 aircraft movements in 2016) in the Southwest Pacific
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FIGURE 10.22 Classification of airports of the Southwest Pacific according to mitigation strategies and their share of aircraft movements at airports of the Southwest Pacific for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at airports of the Southwest Pacific).
region. Adelaide (ADL) represents rather an airport of typical size with almost 82,000 movements and is equipped with two crossing runways. It has no capacity problems. Since average aircraft size with less than 100 passengers per flight is rather small, future passenger volume growth can be handled first of all by larger aircraft size and in addition by more flights. SYD has three runways and a capacity of around 550,000 aircraft movements, which is sufficient to handle the growing flight volume in the forecast period until 2040. Therefore no additional runway capacity has been forecast. With an additional 200,000 aircraft movements and an increase of average aircraft size from 128 to 183 passengers per flight, the airport will be in a position to serve the growing passenger demand until 2040. At that time, however, the airport will operate at capacity level, and an enlargement of capacity seems to be needed then. In discussing the airport situation in world regions, we have seen that the share of congested airports as well as the distribution and future development of traffic volumes and average aircraft size of airports vary substantially between regions. This means that mitigation strategies of airports coping with capacity shortfalls differ correspondingly in regions. Africa has a great number of small-volume airports today and in future, with a great range of average aircraft size, which in most cases do not have major capacity problems. With growing passenger demand, traffic volumes at airports will grow as well; however, airports will not reach volumes of more than
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200,000 aircraft movements in most instances. Options to react to capacity constraints would be, first, new runways and, second, more passengers per flight. Asia is, in contrast, the most important traffic region worldwide and has a high share of airports with large traffic volumes and average aircraft size. More than 40% of the traffic of Asia is handled by these airports today, which will increase to more than 60% in 2040. Twenty-two of the top 50 airports worldwide with high capacity utilisation are located in Asia (see Table 7.1). In addition, Asian airports have to cope with high traffic growth rates. For airports with smaller traffic volumes, but with large average aircraft size, which need additional capacity, we would first recommend new runways, whereas for the larger airports with larger aircraft size, a further increase of average aircraft size may be more appropriate. Given the strong growth of passenger demand, we know, however, that the latter may need additional runway capacity as well. Traffic of European airports is fairly evenly distributed over smaller airports with low average aircraft size, airports with small traffic volumes and larger aircraft size, and airports with higher volumes with more passengers on board. Only the latter two groups of airports will gain in importance in future. Although traffic growth will be smaller in Europe than in Asia and North America, Europe has been and will remain a region where airports with capacity constraints face great problems of enhancing runway capacity by new infrastructure. Eleven of the 50 top airports worldwide with high capacity utilisation rates can be found in Europe. Improving runway utilisation by increasing average aircraft size will probably be the main mitigation strategy. Air traffic volumes of North American airports vary over a wide range, but most of them handle rather small aircraft; more than 70% of the traffic is handled by airports with below-average aircraft size. This will change in future. In 2030 almost 60% of the traffic will be handled by large airports with aircraft with high seat capacity. A great number of airports with high traffic volumes have more or less capacity constraints, and thirteen of the top 50 airports in terms of high capacity utilisation worldwide in 2016 are in North America. For these airports, we would strongly recommend, to cope with the growing demand, increasing average aircraft size. Adding new runways at airports with complex runway systems is most likely not the most efficient strategy. The three remaining regions of the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific are traffic regions with fewer airports and with smaller flight volumes than the three large regions of Asia, North America and Europe. Most of the traffic is handled by rather small-volume airports with a wide range of average aircraft size, in the Middle East and the Southwest Pacific more than 60% and in South America even more than 80%. The largest airports of these regions are Dubai (DXB), Mexico City (MEX) and
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Sydney (SYD), which will be able to grow by means of a new airport and, as in the case of SYD, by improving runway utilisation by more aircraft and higher average aircraft size. For the other airports with capacity problems, we would recommend new runway infrastructure as well; however, a better utilisation of runways by larger aircraft should always be a strategy to follow if appropriate.
10.6 Case study: traffic forecast for San Diego (SAN), London Heathrow (LHR), Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX) This is the final part of the case study of the three example airports San Diego, London Heathrow and Beijing Capital City, which now includes a fourth airport, the second fully fledged hub airport Beijing Daxing (PKX). It opened in September 2019 in the south of Beijing and started with four runways and is expected to be equipped with up to eight runways for civil aviation. Nevertheless, the two hub airports taken as a whole and treated as a whole in this case study will have ample capacity reserves for future growth of passenger and flight volume in the Beijing region. As in the preceding sections, we present results for 2030 and 2040 regarding passenger volume, number of aircraft movements, aircraft size and capacity gain. The purpose is to demonstrate the forecast capability of the models of Part II of the book on the airport level for the example airports. We have included an additional optimistic scenario with a third runway in LHR as proposed by the Airports Commission (2015) to solve the capacity crunch. In this case the maximum number of aircraft movements that LHR can handle per year could increase by about 260,000 to around 740,000 aircraft movements, as already discussed in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints (Airports Commission, 2015). This value is close to our own estimate of the airport capacity model of Chapter 7, Modelling future airport capacity and capacity utilisation, which forecasts a 50% increase of airport capacity given the runway configuration, which means to almost 785,000 aircraft movements per year. But, for the analyses to follow, we keep the value of 740,000 aircraft movements per year of the Airports Commission (2015), which has assumed that the new runway will be fully available no later than 2030 so that there is no demand lost because of a capacity shortage at LHR (see Chapter 8: Modelling future airport capacity enlargements and limits and especially Fig. 8.3 for more details on demand accumulation). Nevertheless, we still expect the status quo to remain at LHR, which means the current runway system to be the more likely case for the years 2030 and 2040. However, we assume that the movement cap will be dropped so that the airport can handle about 523,000 aircraft movements annually, which is a capacity increase of almost 10%. Eventually, we have to take note of the fact that capacity realisation forecasts, especially at LHR,
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are inherently difficult. For SAN we do not expect an enlargement of runway capacity, as it is sufficient to handle the forecast traffic volumes of 2030 and 2040.
10.6.1 Passenger volume
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Fig. 10.23 shows the annual passenger volume of 2016 and the forecast years 2030 and 2040 for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX, and SAN. The annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 are displayed on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040, respectively. About 76 million passengers were handled at LHR in 2016, while around 117 and 144 million passengers per year are forecast for 2030 and 2040, respectively, in the case of two runways. This corresponds to a CAGR of 3.1% for the time period 2016 30 and 2.1% for 2030 40. Overall, passenger volume rises by almost 90% between 2016 and 2040, which is quite amazing given the current capacity situation at LHR. However, the prevailing decreasing growth rate of passenger volume essentially arises from an ever-expanding capacity shortage at LHR, while the demand drivers are more or less stable (see Section 10.2). In the case of an additional runway, passenger volume at LHR could even rise to more than 126 million and 168 million passengers in 2030 and 2040, respectively. This corresponds to a 350
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FIGURE 10.23 Actual and forecast annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40). CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
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CAGR of 3.7% for the time period 2016 30 and 2.9% for 2030 40. In total, passenger volume could even increase by 121% between 2016 and 2040, if a third runway were available at LHR. More than 96 million passengers arrived at or departed from PEK in 2016 and for 2030 and 2040, 202 million and 290 million passengers, respectively, are expected to be handled at the two hub airports of Beijing PEK and PKX. This corresponds to a CAGR of 5.4% for the time period 2016 30 and 3.7% for 2030 40 and, thus, passenger volume will triple between 2016 and 2040. The growth rate slows down substantially over time, because economic development in China is expected to slow down as well in the long term (see Section 10.2). However, growth rates of passenger volume as well as economic development are still significantly higher than in more mature economies such as Europe or North America. Direct capacity constraints play no role because of the new airport PKX; however, there is some unaccommodated demand volume as a result of indirect capacity constraints. Twenty-one million passengers were handled at the single-runway airport SAN in 2016, and passenger volume is forecast to increase to almost 34 million and more than 44 million passengers in 2030 and 2040, respectively. This corresponds to a CAGR of 3.5% for the time period 2016 30 and 2.8% for 2030 40, and passenger volume therefore grows by about 112% between 2016 and 2040. There is no significant capacity shortage expected until 2040 because of a trend to larger aircraft that means more passengers per flight. However, further economic development mirrors that of a mature economy, which limits further growth potential of passenger volume. Fig. 10.24 displays the forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for 2030 and 2040 by airport. The share of unaccommodated passenger volume, which is related to the unconstrained passenger volume, is displayed on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040. In the case that the current runway system will not be extended, about 8.6 million passengers, corresponding to 6.8% of the forecast unconstrained passenger volume of London Heathrow (LHR), cannot be served in 2030 due to a capacity shortage. For 2040 this value increases to nearly 25.2 million passengers, equalling almost 15% of the unconstrained passenger demand volume of LHR. However, if a third runway were to be realised, unaccommodated passenger volume could be reduced to about 340,000 in 2030 and 2.4 million passengers in 2040, which is 0.3% and 1.4% of the unconstrained passenger volume forecast. Any unaccommodated demand is due to capacity constraints at other airports, as there would be sufficient capacity at LHR up to 2040. However, LHR will be almost at its capacity limit of 740,000 aircraft movements per year in 2040. Unaccommodated passenger demand at PEK and PKX and SAN is rather small and caused by indirect capacity constraints. Due to the new airport, Beijing Daxing (PKX), there is a massive capacity increase for the Beijing
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FIGURE 10.24 Forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2030 and 2040 (values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent the share of unaccommodated demand relative to the unconstrained demand, that means forecast passenger volume plus unaccommodated demand).
region and, thus, just between 633,000 (0.3%) and 1.7 million (0.6%) passengers of the unconstrained passenger volume cannot be served, but mainly because of capacity constraints at other Asian airports. SAN has ample capacity reserves in 2016 but will reach its capacity limit in 2040. Around 189,000 passengers (0.6%) in 2030 and 736,000 passengers (1.6%) in 2040 cannot be handled because of a capacity shortage at destination airports. While the level of unaccommodated demand is relatively low at these three airports, capacity constraints are becoming increasingly important, as the trend of the share of unaccommodated demand illustrates: it doubles for the Beijing airports and almost triples for SAN.
10.6.2 Number of aircraft movements Fig. 10.25 displays the forecast number of aircraft movements for 2030 and 2040 for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX, and SAN. The annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 are shown on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040, respectively. In the most likely case, which is the do-nothing scenario for LHR, traffic volume increases only by 0.7% p.a. until 2030. Thereafter the number of aircraft movements remains constant and reaches a level of about 523,000. However, in the optimistic
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FIGURE 10.25 Actual and forecast number of annual aircraft movements for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 [values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40]. CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
case, which means a third runway, the number of aircraft movements is forecast to rise to more than 610,000 in 2030 and almost 725,000 in 2040, which is close to the capacity limit. CAGR of flights is 1.8% for the time period 2016 30 and 1.7% between 2030 and 2040 and, thus, substantially higher due to ample capacity reserves. On the other hand, PEK and PKX, and SAN are examples of airports that do not suffer from direct capacity constraints as there is sufficient capacity available. As a result, the number of aircraft movements grows much faster than at LHR in the case of two runways, especially at PEK and PKX, because of the strong growth of passenger demand volume. For 2030 almost 927,000 aircraft movements are expected at the two Beijing hub airports, and this value is forecast to increase to almost 1.2 million in 2040. This corresponds to a CAGR of 3.1% for 2016 30 and 2.4% for 2030 40. Between 2016 and 2040, the number of aircraft movements will rise by 94%. Because of a more mature market, it is expected to grow much slower at SAN. For 2030 about 218,000 aircraft movements are forecast, which corresponds to a CAGR of 1.7%. The number of aircraft movements is expected to reach a level of almost 254,000, which corresponds to a CAGR of 1.5% between 2030 and 2040. Thus we expect SAN to reach its capacity limit around the year 2040, which is about 260,000 aircraft movements.
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10.6.3 Aircraft size Fig. 10.26 presents the average aircraft size for 2016 and the forecast years 2030 and 2040 for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX, and SAN. The annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 are displayed on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040, respectively. Average aircraft size is expected to increase substantially at all three airports. However, the strongest increase, both in absolute as well as in relative terms, can be found at LHR in the case of no further runway extension. The number of passengers per flight is on average 160 in 2016 and is forecast to increase to 224 in 2030 and 275 in 2040. This corresponds to an annual increase of 2.4% for the period 2016 30 and 2.1% for 2030 40. Thus despite an increasing capacity shortage, growth of passengers per flight slows down slightly, as there are limits to increasing average aircraft size, in particular at hub airports. In the case of a third runway, aircraft size still increases considerably at LHR. In 2030 average aircraft size is forecast to be 207 and 232 in 2040. This equals a CAGR of 1.9% for 2016 30 and 1.1% for 2030 40. Because of the eased capacity situation, the number of passengers per flight is, in 2030, 17 and, in 2040, 43 less than in the case of two runways. Due to capacity constraints at destination airports, average aircraft size increases at PEK and PKX, and SAN considerably as well, however, much
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Passengers per flight (aircraft size)
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FIGURE 10.26 Actual and forecast average aircraft size, that means passengers per flight, for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 [values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40]. CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
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less than at LHR. Furthermore, the strong growth of passenger volume that is expected for 2030 and 2040 at PEK and PKX supports increasing aircraft size. At PEK and PKX, average aircraft size increases from 159 in 2016 to 218 (12.3% p.a. between 2016 and 2030) in 2030 and finally to 246 (11.2% p.a. between 2030 and 2040) in 2040. Average aircraft size increases at SAN from 121 passengers per flight in 2016 to 155 in 2030 and 175 in 2040. This corresponds to a CAGR of 1.8% for 2016 30 and 1.3% for 2030 40.
10.6.4 Capacity analyses
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Capacity gain by larger aircraft in annual passenger volume
Figs 10.27 and 10.28 display the capacity gain by larger aircraft and by runway measures, respectively, for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX and SAN for the periods 2016 30 and 2030 40. As explained earlier, the capacity gain is measured in annual passenger volume to account for aircraft size development. The values on the top of the columns describe the measure-specific relative increase of passenger volume compared to the base year of the forecast, which means 2016 for the first period and 2030 for the second period. In the case of a do-nothing scenario, passenger volume at LHR will increase by 42% due to larger aircraft and by 12% through better runway utilisation between 2016 and 2030. Overall, passenger volume will increase by about 54% during that period. Thus around 78% of the necessary capacity 60 56.1%
50
40 16.0%
42.2%
30
22.7%
34.8% 17.5%
20
10
35.6% 15.8%
0 LHR two runways
LHR three runways 2016–30
PEK and PKX
SAN
2030–40
FIGURE 10.27 Capacity gain by employing larger aircraft, that means more passengers per flight, measured in annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the time periods 2016 to 2030 and 2030 to 2040 (values above the columns for 2016 30 and 2030 40 represent the relative capacity gain during that period).
Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and enlargements in annual passenger volume
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60 27.3% 53.3%
50
40
30 30.5% 15.4%
20
10
11.8% 25.6% 15.8%
0
0.0%
LHR two runways
LHR three runways 2016–30
PEK and PKX
SAN
2030–40
FIGURE 10.28 Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and runway enlargements measured in annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 (values above the columns for 2016 30 and 2030 40 represent the relative capacity gain during that period).
will be provided by increasing aircraft size and only 22% of the necessary capacity comes from better runway utilisation so that more traffic can be handled by the airport. For the period 2030 40, only further increasing aircraft size will contribute to capacity gains at LHR to accommodate the rise of passenger volume of 23% compared to 2030. As a result, the increase of total annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2040 at LHR of almost 68 million passengers is made up of 59 million passengers (87%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and 9 million passengers (13%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation. This is no surprise given the tight capacity situation at LHR and things would be very different in the case of a third runway. In this case, passenger volume would rise by 35% due to larger aircraft and by 31% through better runway utilisation and enlargements between 2016 and 2030, which is more balanced because of ample capacity reserves. For 2030 40 passenger volume is expected to increase by 18% due to larger aircraft and by 15% through better runway utilisation, which is roughly a fifty-fifty ratio. Due to the large capacity increase, total passenger volume is forecast to increase by about 91.3 million (1121%) between 2016 and 2040, which is made up of 48.6 million (53%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and 42.7 million (47%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation and enlargements. The airports PEK and PKX are a different case, because the new hub airport PKX means a massive capacity expansion in the Beijing region. Thus
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passenger volume will increase by 56% due to larger aircraft and by 53% through better runway utilisation and enlargements between 2016 and 2030. This is a more balanced ratio compared to LHR with two runways, and whereas there is sufficient airport capacity in the Beijing region, there are major capacity bottlenecks at other major Asian airports (see Tables 10.7 and 10.13). In total, passenger volume will rise by almost 110% between 2016 and 2030, and each measure provides about half of the necessary capacity. For the 2030 40 period, better runway utilisation becomes more important relative to increasing aircraft size, because aircraft size is already very large and unlike LHR (two runways), there are still ample capacity reserves. Nevertheless, aircraft size continues to increase between 2030 and 2040 substantially. The total increase of annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2040 at PEK and PKX of more than 193 million passengers is made up of more than 86 million (45%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and nearly 107 million (55%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation and enlargements. This is a more balanced ratio compared to the most likely LHR case. Finally, passenger volume at SAN will increase by 36% due to larger aircraft and by 26% through better runway utilisation between 2016 and 2030. Therefore passenger volume will increase by 61% during that period, and about 58% of the necessary capacity will be provided by increasing aircraft size. On the other hand, 42% of the necessary capacity comes from better runway utilisation, as there are considerable capacity reserves at SAN. For the years 2030 40, as at PEK and PKX, better runway utilisation and increasing aircraft size each contribute about 50% to the necessary capacity gain, because aircraft size is already relatively large for a North American airport, and there are still sufficient capacity reserves up to around the year 2040. However, aircraft size is still expected to rise between 2030 and 2040, and the increase totals more than 50 passengers per flight between 2016 and 2040. The overall increase of annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2040 at SAN of 23.5 million passengers is made up of almost 12.8 million (54%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and nearly 10.7 million (46%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation. Thus while SAN and PEK and PKX differ clearly in terms of passenger and flight volume as well as average aircraft size, they are quite similar regarding the composition of mitigation measures.
10.7 Conclusion In this chapter, we presented the main results of the global, regional and airport-specific passenger and flight volume forecast. Future growth of traffic volumes and limiting factors of growth were discussed in the context of measures applied to mitigating existing or forecast airport capacity shortages. As a consequence, some general mitigation strategies have been derived for
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airports of different types regarding their traffic volume and average aircraft size, which means passengers per flight. As was to be expected, our forecast yields a continuation of the longterm growth of air passenger demand and flight volume until 2040, however, with growth varying strongly between world regions. The pace of growth depends on development assumptions of model input variables such as, in particular, socio-economic factors and model design variables such as technological innovations, airport capacity enlargements and growth of aircraft size and utilisation. A key input is the economic development; here, it has been assumed that the real GDP per capita will globally rise by 2.36% p.a. on average between 2016 and 2040. The model’s inherent assumptions of capacity enlargements and aircraft size directly influence forecast results and are seen as the main characteristics of mitigation strategies. Air traffic is forecast to grow substantially until 2040 despite the growing capacity shortage, especially at major airports. Passenger volume is expected to rise from about four billion in 2016 to 9.4 billion passengers in 2040. Depending on the demand growth, the number of flights is forecast to increase from 35.5 million in 2016 to 52.7 million in 2040. Finally, the number of passengers per flight is forecast to rise from an average of 111 in 2016 to 179 passengers in 2040. We have subdivided the forecast into the subperiods 2016 30 and 2030 40 to highlight the effects of capacity constraints at airports on air traffic development. While there is only a marginal unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030 of 49 million on the global level (but not for particular airports), and a lack of airport capacity can still be offset by further increasing aircraft size, there is a substantial shortage in 2040. Almost 256 million passengers cannot be served due to capacity constraints, equalling 2.6% of the global unconstrained demand volume, and more importantly, when relating the value of 2040 to the 2030 value, this share is expected to rise fast beyond 2040. The airports with the largest unaccommodated passenger volume are located in Asia, North America and Europe including Delhi Indira Gandhi (DEL), Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson (ATL) and London Heathrow (LHR). For these airports, the share of unaccommodated passenger volume reaches levels of 15% 25% of their unconstrained passenger volume. Furthermore, we have analysed how much increasing aircraft size as well as better runway utilisation and enlargements contribute to the capacity needed to handle the forecast passenger volume in 2030 and 2040. On the global level, larger aircraft account for 3.1 billion additional passengers and better runway utilisation and enlargements account for 2.3 billion additional passengers. Thus about 57% of the passenger volume growth between 2016 and 2040 is enabled by more passengers per flight and 43% by runwayrelated measures. For heavily capacity constrained airports, increasing aircraft size is even more important, while airports with ample capacity reserves show a more balanced distribution.
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Increasing aircraft size and runway capacity by adding new runways and raising runway utilisation turned out to be the most powerful measures of all options available to airport planners and operators. Theoretically, a whole range of technological, investment and operational options for mitigating a capacity shortage at airports does exist, which have been discussed in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints. Some of these measures have been successfully applied, especially increasing aircraft size and, whenever possible, adding runway capacity, while others have turned out to be rather undesirable measures, such as rerouting flights from congested airports, in particular hubs, to secondary airports, and others are still discussed. However, these have not been proven as effective mitigation measures, such as market-based options, in particular peak hour pricing of flights and slot auctions in slot coordination. Based on these findings, we have derived general mitigation strategies. We have subdivided airports according to their average aircraft size and traffic volume into four classes. Depending on their values, we recommend focusing on increasing aircraft size, improving runway utilisation and enlargements or both. We have also conducted such analyses on the global level for the seven world regions and particular airports in those regions. Between 2016 and 2040, more and more airports fall into the category with a large traffic volume as well as large average aircraft size, making further capacity gains difficult. These airports account for 29% of the traffic volume in 2016 and 55% in 2040. On the other hand, airports with a relatively low traffic volume and aircraft size have a share of 31% in 2016, thus being the largest class, but only 10% in 2040, dropping back to third place. As a result, mitigation measures that we have found to be unfavourable until 2040 in this book (see Chapter 5: General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints) probably need to be reconsidered beyond 2040 despite their drawbacks, especially shifting traffic to neighbouring airports. The forecasts for 2030 and 2040 demonstrate that increasing aircraft size and airport capacity will have limits in future. This is especially true for Asian airports because of the forecast strong demand growth of that region and the already substantial level of passenger and traffic volume. The case study shows the distinct effect of a substantial increase of airport capacity on future air traffic development by means of the new airport in Beijing, which opened late in 2019, and the third runway at London Heathrow, which may still have an uncertain future because of public resistance, although the British government has endorsed the project. Mitigation measures of airports coping with capacity shortfalls differ between and within world regions, since the share of constrained airports as well as the distribution and future development of traffic volumes and average aircraft size vary substantially. Africa has a relatively high number of small-volume airports with a wide range of average aircraft size, which in most cases do not have major capacity problems. Options to react to future
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capacity constraints would be, first, new runways and for airports with rather small aircraft to increase the seat capacity of flights. Asia has, in contrast, a high share of airports with high traffic volumes as well as aircraft with high seat capacity. In addition, almost half of the 50 top-ranking airports with the highest capacity utilisation in 2016 are located in Asia. Given the strong passenger demand growth forecast for Asia, a general mitigation strategy does not exist. For airports with more runways in operation, and correspondingly large traffic volumes, we would recommend additional airports and, as an intermediate measure, a further increase of average aircraft size. We know, however, that both types of measures may no longer be feasible in the long-term future due to local constraints and non-availability of suitable aircraft types. Future traffic in Europe will be distributed over airports with a wide range of traffic volumes with rather high seat capacity. Most major airports do not yet have complex runway systems; therefore for those with further capacity needs, we would recommend adding new runways. Public opposition to capacity enlargements, however, has been strong in Europe. Hence, improving runway utilisation by further increasing average aircraft size may be the only feasible mitigation strategy for such airports for a longer period of time. More than other world regions, North America has many airports with high runway capacity and large traffic volumes. In 2040 almost threequarters of all flights will be handled by high-volume airports, of which, in 2016, around 13 airports already had high utilisation rates. On the other hand, traffic growth in North America will be relatively low and average aircraft size is the smallest of all world regions. A clear recommendation for the capacity constrained airports among them is therefore to increase average aircraft size. Most of the traffic in the three remaining world regions, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific, is handled by airports with smaller traffic volumes than in the major regions of Asia, Europe and North America and with an average aircraft size that varies greatly among airports. Two of the three biggest airports, Dubai (DXB) and Mexico City (MEX) will need and probably get new runway capacity. For other airports with a lack of capacity, we would recommend additional runways as well; however, improving runway utilisation remains a good choice, too.
References Airports Commission, 2015. Airports Commission: Final Report, July 2015. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), 2017. ICAO Traffic Statistics. Montreal. Information Handling Services (IHS) Markit, 2017. Global Economy: Forecast of GDP per Capita and Population Growth Rates (CAGR) 2016 to 2030 and 2030 to 2040. IHS Markit, London. Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016. Data Based on Market Information Data Tapes (MIDT). Sabre, Southlake.
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies In this chapter, we first present the traffic situation for the year 2016 and the forecasts for the years 2030 and 2040. Thereafter we assess different mitigation strategies for the capacity problem. The current chapter closes with the case study and finally the conclusion. The year 2016 serves as the base year in all our forecasts and analyses. With the exception of the top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated passenger volume and the case study, the resolution level of the results presented is the seven world regions which we have already introduced earlier in this book.
10.1 Traffic situation in 2016 The traffic situation of the year 2016 has been extensively analysed in Part I of the book, the results of which serve in this section as the starting point for the 2030 and 2040 forecasts. Thus we briefly recapitulate passenger and flight volume, and aircraft size by world region.
10.1.1 Passenger volume In this chapter, passenger volume refers to the total passenger volume, including transfer passengers between two airports. Fig. 10.1 displays the annual passenger volume by world region in 2016. The number of passengers by world region corresponds thereby with the total number of enplaned passengers of that region. The sum of enplaned passengers of all seven world regions is equal to the total number of passengers carried worldwide. Almost four billion air passengers were transported in 2016 worldwide according to Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI) (2016), which is a slightly higher value compared to the ICAO figure of almost 3.8 billion passengers [International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), 2017; see Chapter 1: Introduction]. However, for the forecast, we need data on passenger and flight volume by airport pair, so we have chosen Sabre MI data for reasons of consistency, and furthermore, forecast growth rates are not affected by this difference. Airport Capacity Constraints and Strategies for Mitigation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-812657-8.00010-5 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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FIGURE 10.1 Annual passenger volume in 2016 by world region; global sum is 4.0 billion passengers carried [Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016].
More than 1.3 billion passengers enplaned in Asia, almost one billion in Europe and more than 900 million in North America in 2016. Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific account for almost 710 million air passengers. About 85% of the passengers had trip origin and destination within world regions. Exceptions are, in particular, the Middle East and Africa, which have a share of intraregional traffic of only 43% and 62%, respectively, and thus are more connected to other world regions. Twenty-two per cent of the air passengers at African airports travelled between Africa and Europe and 13% between Africa and the Middle East. Here, a large part of the passenger volume flies to destinations such as Cape Town and tourism destinations in the northern part of Africa. The airports of the Middle East serve as transfer points between Europe and Asia. About 24% of air passengers travelled between the Middle East and Asia and 19% between the Middle East and Europe. Larger markets such as North America and Asia have a higher-than-average share of intraregional traffic (87% and 92%, respectively) due to more domestic traffic. However, Asia, especially, is a world region that comprises many countries including China, Japan and Indonesia. On the other hand, the North American region consists only of the United States and Canada.
10.1.2 Flight volume Fig. 10.2 shows the annual flight volume in 2016 by world region. There were 35.5 million flights in 2016 (see Fig. 3.9 in Section 3.4). The distribution of flight volume among the world regions is similar to the distribution of passenger
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FIGURE 10.2 Annual flight volume in 2016 by world region; global sum is 35.5 million flights [Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016].
volume. The largest world regions in terms of flight volume are Asia (10.4 million), North America (10.0 million) and Europe (8.3 million). North America and Europe switched rankings, because average aircraft size, that is passengers per flight, is much lower in North America than in Europe, as shown in Section 10.1.3. The remaining four regions account for almost 6.7 million flights. More than 90% of the flight volume in 2016 took place within world regions. This is a slightly higher value compared to the passenger volume, as smaller aircraft are employed for shorter distances. Thus intraregional flights receive more weight in the distribution. This is especially true for the North American region, which is dominated by domestic flights. Here, 93% of the flights are intraregional, and North America accounts for 23% of the global passenger volume, and even for 28% of the global flight volume in 2016. Africa and the Middle East are again regions with the lowest share of intraregional flights (75% and 55%, respectively). However, these values are substantially higher than the corresponding shares of passenger volume, because passengers per flight tend to increase with distance travelled. This is particularly evident for flights between Africa and Europe. They account for 14% of all flights at African airports, and even for 22% of the passenger volume.
10.1.3 Aircraft size Table 10.1 presents the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2016 by world region. This is the ratio of the values of Figs 10.1 and
TABLE 10.1 Passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2016 by world region; global mean value is 111 [Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016]. Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Africa
79
185
148
149
218
183
205
Asia
185
126
183
193
232
198
191
Europe
148
183
110
178
218
267
n.a.
Middle East
149
193
178
114
281
260
338
North America
218
232
218
281
85
121
245
South America
183
198
267
260
121
92
220
Southwest Pacific
205
191
n.a.
338
245
220
87
Ø
96
130
118
146
91
99
97
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10.2. The global mean value of passengers per flight is 111. Mean values by world region are shown in the last row of Table 10.1. Asia (130), Europe (118) and the Middle East (146) are above average, while Africa (96), North America (91), South America (99) and the Southwest Pacific (97) are below average. The lowest average number of passengers per flight can be found in North America due to the high share of domestic flights. Furthermore, the diagonal of Table 10.1 shows the average number of passengers per flight for intraregional flights. These values are, in every case, significantly lower than the values for interregional flights of the corresponding region. The three lowest values are Africa (79), North America (85) and South America (92). Off-diagonal values represent aircraft size of interregional flights. These values tend to increase with flight distance; however, aircraft size of flights from or to Asian airports and airports of the Middle East tend to be generally higher. South America and the Southwest Pacific are special cases due to their geographical position. While values of aircraft size for intraregional flights are among the lowest (92 and 87, respectively), values of passengers per flight for interregional flights are very high because of the large flight distances to most other regions. Finally, the top three values of passengers per flight for interregional flights are on routes of Middle East Southwest Pacific (338), North America Middle East (281) and Europe South America (267).
10.2 Forecast assumptions for 2030 and 2040 Before discussing the forecast results for the years 2030 and 2040, we need to describe the key assumptions that are essential for a sound interpretation of the results from a practitioner’s perspective. We distinguish between two kinds of assumptions as follows: G
G
Assumptions regarding input variables: this category comprises the development of future input variables of the models of Part II, such as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, population and airfare. Assumptions resulting from the model design (Part II of the book): these assumptions are at first sight less obvious than those of the first category, but they have a substantial effect on model results.
Regarding input variables, we focus on the category ‘variable’ of Table 6.2, which means real GDP per capita, population and air fares. Forecasts of real GDP per capita and population have been retrieved from Information Handling Services (IHS) Markit (2017) for each country. Fig. 10.3 displays the distribution of growth rates of these variables between countries and the global mean values which have been calculated by weighting the original values by passenger volume of the year 2016 to account for their relevance for global air traffic development. Thus for real GDP per capita, we assume a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.49% for the
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FIGURE 10.3 Forecast growth rates (CAGR) for real GDP per capita and population for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 [Information Handling Services (IHS) Markit, 2017]. CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
period 2016 30 and 2.19% for the period 2030 40, which results in a CAGR of 2.36% for the period 2016 40. This means that global economic development slows down between 2030 and 2040. The economic development of more mature economies, such as North America and Europe, is forecast to be rather stable between 2016 and 2040, however, much slower compared to GDP per capita growth rates of emerging markets such as Asia and the Middle East. On the other hand, emerging markets, in particular Asia and the Middle East, are forecast to grow much faster in terms of GDP per capita, but they slow down between 2030 and 2040 compared to the 2016 30 period, for example, because of saturation effects. Regarding the development of the global population, we assume a CAGR of 0.55% for the period 2016 30 and 0.32% for the period 2030 40, which yields a CAGR of 0.46% for the period 2016 40. This means that global population growth also slows down between 2030 and 2040. While forecasts of GDP per capita and population are available, this is not the case for the future development of airfares. Based on the analyses described in Chapter 6, Modelling future air passenger demand, we assume that airfares decline globally by 1.5% p.a. on average in real terms because of further technological, institutional and organisational innovations, such as more cost-efficient aircraft, regulatory changes and improvements in air traffic management and control. Nevertheless, airfares are expected to rise in nominal terms, if inflation exceeds 1.5% per year on average. This is
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especially likely to be the case in countries with a higher level of inflation. Ultimately, this assumption does not mean that nominal airfares develop synchronously among countries and routes, as different levels of inflation lead to different levels of nominal airfare development. But, improvements in productivity, which are driven by the aforementioned innovations, are typically not limited to a particular country or flight route and are eventually spread around the globe in the long term, because air traffic is a global phenomenon. Furthermore, we do not consider measures, such as congestion pricing, because this presently is still a theoretical option, as discussed in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints; however, it may play a more important role in the future. Assumptions of the second category are hard-wired in the models, and the reader is referred to Part II of this book for more details. In this chapter, we focus on key assumptions, which have far-reaching effects on the forecast results and their analysis, especially from a practitioner’s perspective. These key assumptions comprise G G G G
technological innovations, airport capacity utilisation, aircraft load factor, and unaccommodated demand in 2016.
Regarding technological innovations, we assume gradual progress, but no radical change. This is reflected, for example, in the assumption about future airfare development and incorporated especially in the models of airport capacity and aircraft size. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is not well suited for radical technological change, as it is essentially a sophisticated benchmarking approach based upon best practices. The second key assumption that underlies the forecasts is that of airport capacity utilisation. Here, we assume the highest possible utilisation that is supported by empirical evidence. This is the key assumption of the airport capacity model in Chapter 7, Modelling future airport capacity and capacity utilisation. Therefore, we assume that off-peak times during daytime will be increasingly filled up over time as traffic volume grows and available airport capacity runs short. While we do not model the flight load factor, the implicit assumption of the aircraft size model of Chapter 9, Modelling future development of the average number of passengers per flight, is that route-specific load factors achieve the highest possible level that is supported by empirical evidence, if passenger demand is sufficiently high. The higher the load factor is, the higher is the number of passengers per aircraft. Modelling load factors explicitly becomes necessary if we assign specific aircraft types to routes; however, this is not the case in this book. To sum up, we are cautious regarding rapid technological innovations and assume the best possible utilisation of airport and aircraft capacity. From our point of view, these assumptions are necessary to avoid producing forecast results that do not have a sound empirical foundation.
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Finally, unaccommodated passenger volume is defined in this book as the passenger demand that cannot be served because of limited airport capacity, including mitigation measures such as expanding airport capacity and employing larger aircraft with more seat capacity. However, we have chosen to disregard any unaccommodated passenger volume in 2016, because it is hard to identify with satisfactory precision by hindsight. Furthermore, as we will see in Section 10.3.1, the number of unaccommodated passengers is forecast to be still very low in 2030 on a global level, so the assumption of almost no unaccommodated passengers in 2016 seems to be not too restrictive. For 2030, this volume is relevant only for a small number of important airports (see Table 10.7 further down) and in 2016 most likely just for London Heathrow (LHR). Thus as it seems to be of only minor relevance for 2016 and to avoid arbitrary results, we maintain this assumption, but we have to keep in mind that strictly speaking the forecast unaccommodated passenger volume for 2030 and 2040 is only the difference to 2016, so that the numbers are just slightly on the low side in total terms, maybe with the exception of LHR.
10.3 Traffic forecasts for 2016 30 In this section, we present the results of the traffic forecast for 2030. As for the base year of 2016, we display passenger and flight volume, and aircraft size of the year 2030 and their growth rates (CAGR) for the time period from 2016 to 2030. Furthermore, we identify the unaccommodated demand by world region and the top 20 airports worldwide in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2030.
10.3.1 Passenger volume Fig. 10.4 shows the forecast annual passenger volume by world region for the year 2030. A global passenger volume of almost seven billion air passengers is expected for 2030, which is about 1.76 times the passenger volume of 2016, with a CAGR of 4.1% (see Table 10.2). More than 2.6 billion passengers are forecast for Asia, followed by Europe with almost 1.6 billion passengers and North America with nearly 1.5 billion passengers. Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific are expected to account for about 1.3 billion air passengers in 2030. As in 2016, 85% of the passengers are forecast to have flight origins and destinations within world regions. Thus 5.9 billion passengers use intraregional air services. The relative intraregional distribution of passenger volume is forecast to remain more or less the same as in 2016. The Middle East and Africa are expected have a share of intraregional traffic of about 42% and 64%, respectively, which is only marginally different from the situation of 2016. Twenty per cent of air passengers of Africa are forecast to travel to
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Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.4 Forecast annual passenger volume for the year 2030 by world region; global sum is 6.9 billion passengers carried.
Europe and 14% to the Middle East. This means that the Middle East is expected to gain slightly in importance for African airports, while European airports will become less important, however, only very slightly. In 2030 the airports of the Middle East will still serve as transfer points between Europe and Asia. A share of 27% of air passengers is forecast to travel between the Middle East and Asia and 18% between the Middle East and Europe. Thus the Asian region gains in importance for the Middle East, while the European region becomes slightly less important. The higher-than-average shares of intraregional travel of the large markets of North America and Asia (87% and 92%, respectively) will remain virtually constant in 2030 compared to 2016. Table 10.2 displays the annual passenger volume growth rates for the time period from 2016 to 2030. A CAGR of 4.1% is forecast for the global mean value; however, there is significant variation between world regions. Asia, the Middle East and Africa show the highest annual growth rates of 4.9%, 4.5% and 4.4%, respectively. However, the value of Africa, in particular, has to be put in perspective, because of the low demand volume level. Africa and the Southwest Pacific have by far the lowest passenger volume in 2016 and 2030, and about one-third percentage points above-average growth rates over a time period of 14 years will not change things significantly. The same applies more or less to the Middle East, which is the third smallest region in terms of passenger volume in 2016 and 2030. All the more important becomes the value of 4.9% of the Asian region, as it is the largest world
TABLE 10.2 Forecast annual passenger volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2016 30 by world region; global mean value is 4.1%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
4.6
5.4
3.9
4.6
4.0
4.1
4.1
Asia
5.4
5.0
3.9
5.0
3.9
4.2
4.1
Europe
3.9
3.9
3.3
4.1
3.3
3.7
n.a.
Middle East
4.6
5.0
4.1
4.4
4.2
4.6
4.5
North America
4.0
3.9
3.3
4.2
3.5
3.7
3.8
South America
4.1
4.2
3.7
4.6
3.7
4.1
4.2
Southwest Pacific
4.1
4.1
n.a.
4.5
3.8
4.2
3.7
Ø
4.4
4.9
3.4
4.5
3.5
4.0
3.8
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
235
Unaccommodated annual passenger volume
Million
region in terms of passenger volume both in 2016 and 2030. Therefore the global mean value of 4.1% is essentially a result of the strong passenger volume growth of the Asian region, as the other two large regions, Europe and North America, are expected to grow much slower, because their markets are more developed. In fact, all regions except Africa, Asia and the Middle East show below-average growth rates in terms of forecast passenger volume in 2030. The highest growth rate of Table 10.2 with 5.4% is the growing air travel between Africa and Asia, followed by a value of 5.0% for air travel between Asia and the Middle East, as well as within the Asian region. However, while passenger volume between Africa and Asia accounts for only 0.1% and between Asia and the Middle East just for about 2.4% of the forecast global passenger volume in 2030, the Asian domestic volume has a share of more than 35%. In contrast, the three lowest growth rates can be found for the European domestic (3.3%), Europe North America (3.3%) and North American domestic (3.5%) travel flows. In particular, the growth of European and North American domestic passenger volumes has a significant impact on the global mean value, as they each account for about 19% of the forecast global passenger volume in 2030. Fig. 10.5 presents the unaccommodated annual passenger volume in 2030 by world region. As already explained, unaccommodated passenger volume is the forecast passenger demand that cannot be served as a result of a capacity shortage at airports, including mitigation measures such as expanding 25
20
15
10
5
0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.5 Forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for the year 2030 by world region; global sum is 49.4 million passengers.
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
airport capacity and employing larger aircraft with more seat capacity. Thus the forecast ‘unconstrained’ passenger demand is defined by the sum of the values of Figs 10.4 and 10.5; however, this is only a theoretical value. Unaccommodated passenger volume is computed for each airport pair to consider route-specific developments regarding passengers per flight and airport capacity limits. The unaccommodated passenger volume totals up to 49 million passengers worldwide in 2030 and represents about 0.7% of the forecast global unconstrained passenger volume in 2030. The largest amounts of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030 can be found in Asia (21.0 million), North America (19.2 million) and Europe (7.0 million), because airport capacity and aircraft size developments in these regions are insufficient for serving the unconstrained passenger demand. In these three regions, intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume has the highest share of total unaccommodated passenger volume per region (58% for Europe, 89% for North America and 92% for Asia). On the other hand, intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume does not exist in Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific, as sufficient airport capacity is expected for 2030. Unaccommodated passenger volume in these regions is solely a result of insufficient airport capacity in other regions and sums up to about 2.2 million passengers in 2030. Here, we call unaccommodated demand of a region or airport, which is caused by a lack of airport capacity of the same region or airport, ‘direct capacity constraints’, while we name unaccommodated demand of a region or airport, which is caused by a lack of airport capacity of another region or airport, ‘indirect capacity constraints’. Thus the unaccommodated demand of Asia, Europe and North America is primarily caused by direct capacity constraints, while Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific suffer from indirect capacity constraints. Table 10.3 displays the forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for 2030 by world region, which is defined as the ratio of the values of Fig. 10.5 to the sum of the values of Figs 10.4 and 10.5, that means the ratio of unaccommodated passenger volume to unconstrained passenger volume. North America, Asia and Europe show the highest values, while Africa, South America and the Southwest Pacific have almost negligible shares of unaccommodated demand, which can be found exclusively in interregional passenger volume. The case of the Middle East is quite unique. While there is no capacity shortage at Middle Eastern airports, the forecast share of unaccommodated demand is almost as high as that of Europe, because of airport capacity constraints in Asia and Europe.
10.3.2 Flight volume Fig. 10.6 shows the flight volume forecast for 2030 by world region. Nearly 46 million flights are forecast for the year 2030 globally, which means that
TABLE 10.3 Forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for the year 2030 by world region; global mean value is 0.9%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
0.0
2.4
0.5
0.0
1.1
0.0
0.0
Asia
2.4
0.8
1.2
0.8
0.7
0.0
0.4
Europe
0.5
1.2
0.3
0.8
2.1
0.3
n.a.
Middle East
0.0
0.8
0.8
0.0
0.5
0.0
0.0
North America
1.1
0.7
2.1
0.5
1.3
0.6
0.0
South America
0.0
0.0
0.3
0.0
0.6
0.0
0.0
Southwest Pacific
0.0
0.4
n.a.
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
Ø
0.1
0.8
0.4
0.4
1.3
0.1
0.0
Million
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040 16
14
Annual flight volume
12
10
8
6
4
2
0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.6 Forecast annual flight volume for the year 2030 by world region; global sum is 45.8 million flights.
the global flight volume grows by almost 29% compared to 2016; however, this is much lower than the growth of passenger volume of 76%. The largest regions in terms of flight volume are Asia (14.6 million), North America (12.3 million) and Europe (10.1 million). Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific account for almost 8.7 million flights in 2030. As in 2016, 90% of the traffic is forecast to take place within world regions. Thus 41.3 million flights are intraregional. The relative intraregional distribution of flight volume is expected to remain more or less the same as in 2016. With the exception of Africa and the Middle East, the share of intraregional flights is between 87% (South America) and 95% (Asia). The Middle East and Africa are well below average, and they are expected to have a share of about 55% and 76%, respectively, which is virtually the same as in 2016. Table 10.4 presents the annual flight volume growth rates for the time period from 2016 to 2030. A CAGR of 1.8% is forecast for the global mean value; however, there is considerable variation between world regions. Asia, the Middle East and Africa show the highest annual growth rates of 2.4%, 2.2% and 1.9%, respectively. Europe and North America display forecast growth rates of 1.4% and 1.5%, respectively, which are well below average. South America and the Southwest Pacific each show values of 1.8%. The highest forecast values can be found for the routes of South America Middle East and Southwest Pacific Middle East (2.6%). On the other hand, the lowest value of 1.4% applies for North American and European
TABLE 10.4 Forecast annual flight volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2016 30 by world region; global mean value is 1.8%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
2.0
2.4
1.6
2.2
1.8
1.9
2.0
Asia
2.4
2.5
1.7
2.5
2.0
1.9
2.0
Europe
1.6
1.7
1.4
1.8
1.4
1.9
n.a.
Middle East
2.2
2.5
1.8
2.1
2.2
2.6
2.6
North America
1.8
2.0
1.4
2.2
1.4
1.6
2.1
South America
1.9
1.9
1.9
2.6
1.6
1.9
2.2
Southwest Pacific
2.0
2.0
n.a.
2.6
2.1
2.2
1.7
Ø
1.9
2.4
1.4
2.2
1.5
1.8
1.8
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
domestic, and North American European routes. For 2030 we expect only minor effects of limited airport capacity in South America, the Southwest Pacific and the Middle East, while there will be a significant capacity shortage at airports in Europe, North America and even Asia due to the strong demand growth, eventually limiting further flight volume growth.
10.3.3 Aircraft size Table 10.5 presents the forecast values of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2030, which is the ratio of the values of Figs 10.4 and 10.6. On a global level, average aircraft size is forecast to increase from 111 in 2016 to 152 passengers per flight between 2016 and 2030. Aircraft size is expected to be clearly above average for Asia (181) and the Middle East (201), while the values for Africa (134), North America (120), South America (133) and the Southwest Pacific (128) are forecast to be well below average. The value of Europe (154) is close to the global mean value of 152 passengers per flight. As in 2016, intraregional flights carry on average a lower number of passengers per flight compared to interregional flights in 2030. The lowest number of passengers per flight is forecast for flights within North America (112), Africa (112) and the Southwest Pacific (114). On the other hand, the highest number of passengers per flight is expected for interregional flights, such as Middle East Southwest Pacific (437), Middle East North America (367), South America Middle East (342) and South America Europe (342). Table 10.6 displays the forecast annual growth rates of aircraft size for the time period 2016 30. The global mean value is 2.2%. Africa (2.4%), Asia (2.4%) and the Middle East (2.3%) show above-average values, while the average aircraft size development of Europe (2.0%), North America (2.0%), South America (2.1%) and the Southwest Pacific (2.0%) is below average. The three highest values are 2.9% for African Asian, 2.6% for African domestic and 2.5% for Asian Middle Eastern routes, while the lowest value is 1.7% for North American Southwest Pacific, 1.8% for Asian North American, Middle Eastern Southwest Pacific and European South American routes and 1.9% for European domestic, European North American and North American Middle Eastern routes.
10.3.4 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2030 Table 10.7 presents the top 20 airports regarding unaccommodated passenger demand volume in 2030. Among these 20 airports are ten from Asia, one from Europe, one from the Middle East and eight from North America. As expected, most airports are from world regions which suffer mostly from direct capacity constraints. Here, Atlanta Hartsfield–Jackson (ATL) is
TABLE 10.5 Forecast of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2030 by world region; global mean value is 152. Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Africa
112
275
201
206
294
250
273
Asia
275
177
246
274
298
269
253
Europe
201
246
144
240
284
342
n.a.
Middle East
206
274
240
156
367
342
437
North America
294
298
284
367
112
161
311
South America
250
269
342
342
161
125
292
Southwest Pacific
273
253
n.a.
437
311
292
114
Ø
134
181
154
201
120
133
128
TABLE 10.6 Forecast average aircraft size growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2016 30 by world region; global mean value is 2.2%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
2.6
2.9
2.2
2.4
2.2
2.2
2.1
Asia
2.9
2.4
2.1
2.5
1.8
2.2
2.0
Europe
2.2
2.1
1.9
2.2
1.9
1.8
n.a.
Middle East
2.4
2.5
2.2
2.2
1.9
2.0
1.8
North America
2.2
1.8
1.9
1.9
2.0
2.1
1.7
South America
2.2
2.2
1.8
2.0
2.1
2.2
2.0
Southwest Pacific
2.1
2.0
n.a.
1.8
1.7
2.0
2.0
Ø
2.4
2.4
2.0
2.3
2.0
2.1
2.0
TABLE 10.7 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030. No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
1
ATL
Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson
974
158
162
11.2
6.6
100.0
2
LHR
London Heathrow
523
117
224
8.6
6.8
100.0
3
BOM
Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji
447
98
220
6.7
6.4
100.0
4
CAN
Guangzhou Baiyun
592
121
205
6.7
5.2
100.0
5
ORD
Chicago O’Hare
945
117
123
6.4
5.2
100.0
6
CGK
Jakarta SoekarnoHatta
629
122
195
5.6
4.4
100.0
7
DEL
Delhi Indira Gandhi
599
127
212
3.6
2.7
100.0
8
LGA
New York LaGuardia
416
43
104
2.3
5.1
100.0
9
BLR
Bengaluru Kempegowda
274
51
188
1.0
1.8
100.0
10
DXB
Dubai
538
172
319
0.9
0.5
91.0
11
SIN
Singapore Changi
480
108
224
0.8
0.7
58.5 (Continued )
TABLE 10.7 (Continued) No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
12
LAX
Los Angeles
799
129
162
0.7
0.5
98.2
13
PEK & PKX
Beijing Capital City and Daxing
927
202
218
0.6
0.3
45.5
14
MIA
Miami
404
68
168
0.6
0.8
55.5
15
DFW
Dallas/Fort Worth
807
101
125
0.5
0.5
92.5
16
MCO
Orlando
368
65
176
0.5
0.8
51.6
17
HYD
Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi
182
35
194
0.5
1.4
32.4
18
MAA
Chennai
218
41
188
0.5
1.2
49.6
19
SUB
Juanda
247
45
183
0.5
1.1
47.3
20
BOS
Boston Logan
422
57
135
0.5
0.9
49.0
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
245
expected to be the airport with the highest unaccommodated passenger demand volume (11.2 million), followed by London Heathrow (LHR, 8. 6 million) and Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji (BOM, 6.7 million). Their unaccommodated passenger volume represents 6.6%, 6.8% and 6.4%, respectively, of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume in 2030. Airports such as ATL, LHR and BOM have serious capacity problems and thus suffer primarily from direct capacity constraints and have a capacity utilisation of 100%. On the other hand, the airports on the second half of the list of Table 10.7 have a capacity utilisation of less than 100% but suffer from indirect capacity constraints, meaning a capacity shortage at the destination airport. They typically have a forecast unaccommodated passenger volume of around one million per year or less, which is, in most cases, about 1% of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume in 2030 or less. Examples include the two hub airports of Beijing (PEK and PKX), which are treated as an airport system in terms of airport capacity in this book, Chennai (MAA) and Juanda (SUB). Unaccommodated demand volume of these airports lies in a range of between 500,000 and 600,000 passengers in 2030, which is about 0.3% 1.2% of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume. They suffer primarily from indirect capacity constraints, which means that they cannot handle the full demand potential due to a capacity shortage at other destinations. Dubai airport (DXB) is another remarkable case. While not having a capacity shortage itself (nor any other airport of the Middle East) in 2030, unaccommodated passenger volume totals almost one million (0.5% of forecast unconstrained passenger volume) solely because of capacity constraints at airports outside the Middle East. Most of the unaccommodated passenger volume is concentrated on a small number of airports in 2030. The top ten airports account for about 54% of the unaccommodated passenger volume worldwide. Here, the values of Table 10.7 need to be divided by a value of two to allow comparisons with Fig. 10.5, because passengers are counted twice in Table 10.7, as arriving and departing passengers per airport. Nevertheless, while unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030 is rather small compared to the forecast passenger volume on a global level, it is quite significant for particular world regions and airports. However, this is set to change for the time period from 2030 to 2040 and will be described in the next section.
10.4 Traffic forecasts for 2030 40 In this section, we continue with the results of the traffic forecast for 2040. This time, the baseline year is the forecast for 2030, to highlight differences in traffic development between the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40. In particular, we expect airport capacity constraints to become more important during the second period compared to the first. As for the 2030 forecast, we show passenger and flight volume, and aircraft size of the year 2040 and
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
their growth rates (CAGR) for the time period from 2030 to 2040. Again, we identify the unaccommodated demand by world region and the top 20 airports worldwide in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2040.
10.4.1 Passenger volume
Million
Fig. 10.7 presents the forecast annual passenger volume by world region for the year 2040. Nearly 9.4 billion air passengers are expected for 2040 globally, which is about 1.36 times the passenger volume forecast for 2030 and equals a CAGR of 3.1% (see Table 10.8). This is substantially less than for the period 2016 30 and is due to a slower economic development and population growth (see Fig. 10.3), as well as the increasing importance of airport capacity constraints. Almost 3.7 billion passengers are forecast for Asia, followed by Europe with around two billion passengers and North America with more than 1.9 billion passengers. Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific are expected to account for nearly 1.8 billion air passengers in 2040. As before, 85% of the traffic is forecast to take place within world regions. Thus almost eight billion passengers will use intraregional air services. The relative intraregional distribution of passenger volume is forecast to remain more or less the same as in 2016 and 2030. The Middle East and Africa are expected to have a share of intraregional traffic of about 42%
4000
Annual passenger volume
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0 Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.7 Forecast annual passenger volume for the year 2040 by world region; global sum is 9.4 billion.
TABLE 10.8 Forecast annual passenger volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2030 40 by world region; global mean value is 3.1%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
3.7
3.5
3.0
3.7
3.2
3.7
3.6
Asia
3.5
3.4
2.7
3.5
2.8
3.4
3.1
Europe
3.0
2.7
2.6
3.1
2.5
3.1
n.a.
Middle East
3.7
3.5
3.1
3.5
3.2
3.8
3.5
North America
3.2
2.8
2.5
3.2
2.7
3.1
2.9
South America
3.7
3.4
3.1
3.8
3.1
3.6
3.6
Southwest Pacific
3.6
3.1
n.a.
3.5
2.9
3.6
2.9
Ø
3.6
3.3
2.6
3.5
2.8
3.4
3.0
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
and 65%, respectively, which is only a marginal difference compared to the situation of 2016 and 2030. Nineteen per cent of air passengers of Africa are forecast to travel to Europe and 14% to the Middle East. As in 2016 and 2030 the airports of the Middle East are major transfer points of passengers between Europe and Asia. A share of 27% of air passengers is forecast to travel between the Middle East and Asia and 17% between the Middle East and Europe, which are more or less the values of 2016 and 2030. The higher-than-average shares of intraregional travel of the large markets of North America and Asia (87% and 93%, respectively) will remain virtually constant in 2040 compared to 2030 and 2016. Thus as expected, there is no significant change in the traffic structure between world regions, which is no surprise given the share of interregional traffic of only 15%. Table 10.8 shows the average growth rates of annual passenger volume for the time period 2030 40. A CAGR of 3.1% is forecast for the global mean value, and there is significant variation between world regions. As for the period 2016 30, traffic of Africa, the Middle East and Asia grows with the highest annual growth rates of 3.6%, 3.5% and 3.3%, respectively; however, they are expected to decrease substantially compared to the previous period. Africa and the Middle East decline by 0.8% and 1.0% points, respectively, and Asia by even 1.6% points. In particular, Asia’s limited airport capacity plays a major role. Africa and the Middle East suffer from a capacity shortage in Asia, while there are no capacity constraints at their own airports. As in the previous period the global mean value of 3.1% is mainly a result of the forecast strong passenger volume growth of the Asian region, as the other two large regions, Europe and North America, are expected to grow much slower. The highest growth rate of Table 10.8 is 3.8% and can be found for air travel between South America and the Middle East, followed by a value of 3.7% for air travel between Africa and the Middle East and South America, respectively, as well as within the African region. The common feature of these relations is that airport capacity constraints play no role. In contrast, the three lowest growth rates can be found for European North American (2.5%), European domestic (2.6%) and European Asian as well as North American domestic (2.7%) routes. In particular, the Europe domestic figure has a considerable impact on the global mean value, as it still accounts for about 18% of the forecast global passenger volume in 2040. Nevertheless, these markets are all plagued by a capacity shortage at their main airports. Fig. 10.8 shows the unaccommodated annual passenger volume in 2040 by world region. The unaccommodated passenger volume sums up to almost 256 million passengers worldwide in 2040 and is 2.6% of the forecast global unconstrained passenger volume. This is a substantial increase compared to 2030, both in absolute as well as in relative terms. The largest levels of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2040 can be found in Asia (156.6 million), North America (63.2 million) and Europe (22.2 million), as airport capacity
Unaccommodated annual passenger volume
Million
Traffic forecast and mitigation strategies Chapter | 10
249
180 160 140 120
100 80 60 40 20 0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.8 Forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for the year 2040 by world region; global sum is 286.7 million passengers.
constraints become increasingly more important, and aircraft size developments cannot fully offset the capacity shortage. As in 2030 intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume has the highest share of total unaccommodated passenger volume in these regions (53% for Europe, 88% for North America and 93% for Asia). On the other hand, intraregional unaccommodated passenger volume does not exist in Africa, the Middle East and the Southwest Pacific and only marginally in South America, as more or less sufficient airport capacity is expected in 2040. Unaccommodated passenger volume in these regions is mainly a result of insufficient airport capacity in other regions and sums up to about 13.4 million passengers in 2040. However, we expect things to change beyond 2040, as can be seen exemplarily by the South American region. Here, airports such as Sao Paulo Congonhas (CGH), Mexico City (MEX) and Cancun (CUN) already suffer from direct capacity constraints; however, their share of unaccommodated demand is 1% or even less. Table 10.9 displays the forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for 2040 by world region. Asia (4.1%), North America (3.2%) and Middle East (1.8%) show the highest values, while Africa (0.4%), South America (0.5%) and the Southwest Pacific (0.2%) have low shares of unaccommodated demand, which can be found with the exception of South America exclusively in interregional passenger volume. The situation of the Middle East worsens compared to 2030. While there is still no capacity shortage at airports of the Middle East, the forecast share of
TABLE 10.9 Forecast share of unaccommodated passenger volume for the year 2040 by world region; global mean value is 3.0%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
0.0
8.1
1.0
0.0
2.5
0.0
0.0
Asia
8.1
4.1
4.3
5.1
2.7
0.0
1.3
Europe
1.0
4.3
0.7
1.7
4.9
0.8
n.a.
Middle East
0.0
5.1
1.7
0.0
1.8
0.0
0.0
North America
2.5
2.7
4.9
1.8
3.2
1.9
2.0
South America
0.0
0.0
0.8
0.0
1.9
0.2
0.0
Southwest Pacific
0.0
1.3
n.a.
0.0
2.0
0.0
0.0
Ø
0.4
4.1
1.1
1.8
3.2
0.5
0.2
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unaccommodated demand rises from 0.4% to 1.8% in 2030, in particular due to an increasing capacity shortage at Asian airports, but limited airport capacity in Europe and North America play a role as well.
10.4.2 Flight volume
Million
Fig. 10.9 presents the flight volume forecast for 2040 by world region. More than 52 million flights are forecast for the year 2040 globally, which means that the global flight volume grows by almost 15% compared to 2030; however, this is a considerably lower value compared to the period 2016 30 (129%). The largest regions in terms of flight volume are Asia (17.2 million), North America (13.9 million) and Europe (11.3 million). Africa, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific account for around 10.1 million flights in 2040. Ninety-one per cent of the traffic is forecast to have flight origins and destinations within world regions, which is virtually the same as in 2016 and 2030. As a result, 47.5 million flights depart and arrive within the same region. The relative intraregional distribution of flight volume is expected to remain more or less the same as in 2016 and 2030. With the exception of Africa and the Middle East, the share of intraregional flights is between 87% (South America) and 95% (Asia). The Middle East and Africa are well below average, and they are expected to have a share of about 55% and 76%, respectively, which is virtually the same as in 2016 and 2030. 20 18
Annual flight volume
16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Africa Africa
Asia Asia
Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America North America
South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.9 Forecast annual flight volume for the year 2040 by world region; global sum is 52.7 million flights.
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Table 10.10 illustrates the annual flight volume growth rates for the time period from 2030 to 2040. A CAGR of 1.4% is forecast globally; however, there is considerable variation between the different world regions. Asia, the Middle East and South America each have the highest annual growth rates of 1.6%. Europe and North America display forecast growth rates of 1.1% and 1.2%, respectively, which are well below average. Africa and the Southwest Pacific show values each of 1.3% and 1.5%, respectively. The highest forecast values can be found for South America Middle East and Southwest Pacific Middle East (2.3%). These markets do not have a shortage of airport capacity. On the other hand, the lowest value of 1.0% refers to Europe North America and Africa Europe, which is a result of the declining GDP growth rates that are expected until 2040 and increasing capacity problems at airports.
10.4.3 Aircraft size Table 10.11 displays the forecast values of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2040. On average, aircraft size is forecast to increase from 152 in 2030 to 179 passengers per flight in 2040 worldwide. It is expected to be clearly above average for Asia (214) and the Middle East (242), while the values for Africa (167), North America (139), South America (158) and the Southwest Pacific (148) are forecast to be well below average. The value of Europe (180) is very close to the global mean value. As in 2016 and 2030 intraregional flights carry on average a lower number of passengers per flight compared to interregional flights in 2040. The lowest number of passengers per flight is forecast for flights within North America (130), the Southwest Pacific (131) and Africa (142). On the other hand, the highest number of passengers per flight is forecast for interregional flights, such as Middle East Southwest Pacific (490), Middle East North America (422) and South America Middle East (396). Table 10.12 displays the forecast annual growth rates of aircraft size for the time period 2030 40. The global mean value is 1.7%, meaning that average growth rates slow down substantially compared to the previous period despite increasing capacity constraints, because there are upper limits to aircraft size and the rate at which it can be increased. This reveals the dilemma of the Asian region. Forecast demand growth for 2030 and 2040 is high, and the level of demand is already quite substantial in 2016 and 2030. However, in the long run, there are both limits to expanding airport capacity and to increasing aircraft size, thus leading to high levels of unaccommodated demand. While increasing aircraft size, typically, is easier than expanding airport capacity by adding new runways, there are still upper limits to aircraft size and the rate at which it can be increased, as a comparison of Tables 10.12 and 10.6 illustrates by the decreasing growth rates.
TABLE 10.10 Forecast annual flight volume growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2030 40 by world region; global mean value is 1.4%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
1.3
1.3
1.0
1.7
1.1
1.3
1.4
Asia
1.3
1.7
1.1
1.4
1.5
1.7
1.7
Europe
1.0
1.1
1.1
1.4
1.0
1.6
n.a.
Middle East
1.7
1.4
1.4
1.7
1.8
2.3
2.3
North America
1.1
1.5
1.0
1.8
1.2
1.2
1.4
South America
1.3
1.7
1.6
2.3
1.2
1.7
1.8
Southwest Pacific
1.4
1.7
n.a.
2.3
1.4
1.8
1.5
Ø
1.3
1.6
1.1
1.6
1.2
1.6
1.5
TABLE 10.11 Forecast of the average number of passengers per flight (aircraft size) in 2040 by world region; global mean value is 179. Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Africa
142
344
245
250
361
314
336
Asia
344
209
290
336
339
318
292
Europe
245
290
167
285
331
395
n.a.
Middle East
250
336
285
185
422
396
490
North America
361
339
331
422
130
193
358
South America
314
318
395
396
193
150
346
Southwest Pacific
336
292
n.a.
490
358
346
131
Ø
167
214
180
242
139
158
148
TABLE 10.12 Forecast average aircraft size growth rates per year [compound annual growth rate (CAGR)] for the period 2030 40 by world region; global mean value is 1.7%. Africa (%)
Asia (%)
Europe (%)
Middle East (%)
North America (%)
South America (%)
Southwest Pacific (%)
Africa
2.4
2.2
2.0
1.9
2.1
2.3
2.1
Asia
2.2
1.7
1.7
2.1
1.3
1.7
1.4
Europe
2.0
1.7
1.5
1.7
1.5
1.5
n.a.
Middle East
1.9
2.1
1.7
1.8
1.4
1.5
1.2
North America
2.1
1.3
1.5
1.4
1.5
1.8
1.4
South America
2.3
1.7
1.5
1.5
1.8
1.8
1.7
Southwest Pacific
2.1
1.4
n.a.
1.2
1.4
1.7
1.5
Ø
2.2
1.7
1.5
1.8
1.5
1.8
1.5
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Looking at the seven world regions and their interdependencies, Africa (2.2%), Asia (1.7%), the Middle East (1.8%) and South America (1.8%) show above-average values, while the average aircraft size development of Europe (1.5%), North America (1.5%) and the Southwest Pacific (1.5%) is below average. The three highest values are 2.4% for Africa domestic, 2.3% for Africa South America and 2.2% for Asia Africa, while the lowest values are 1.2% for Southwest Pacific Middle East, 1.3% for North America Asia and 1.4% for Middle East North America, Asia Southwest Pacific and North America Southwest Pacific.
10.4.4 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated demand in 2040 Table 10.13 shows the top 20 airports regarding unaccommodated passenger demand volume in 2040. Among these 20 airports are 14 from Asia, one from Europe, one from the Middle East and four from North America. There are 14 airports suffering from direct capacity constraints (capacity utilisation of 100%), that is five more compared to 2030. Dubai (DXB) and Singapore Changi (SIN) airports are examples which still do not have a capacity shortage but suffer from capacity constraints at destination airports. Unaccommodated demand of these airports is expected to total between 5.7 and 6.3 million passengers in 2040, which is 2.6% and 3.8%, respectively, of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume for 2040. This is quite substantial, given the fact that these airports do not suffer from direct capacity constraints. Overall, unaccommodated passenger volume of airports with capacity reserves but suffering from indirect capacity constraints has increased substantially compared to 2030. Delhi Indira Gandhi (DEL) is expected to be the airport with the highest unaccommodated demand volume of 46.0 million passengers, followed by Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji (BOM, 42.1 million) and Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta (CGK, 41.8 million). Thus the top three airports are exclusively from Asia and their unaccommodated passenger volume represents 22.4%, 25.5% and 21.5% respectively, of their forecast unconstrained passenger volume in 2040. As in 2030, most of the unaccommodated passenger volume is still concentrated on a small number of airports in 2040. The top ten airports account for about 49% and the top 20 for about 59% of the unaccommodated passenger volume worldwide. As for 2030 the values of Table 10.13 need to be divided by a value of two to allow comparisons with Fig. 10.8, because passengers are counted twice in Table 10.13, that means arriving and departing passengers per airport. As indicated earlier in the book, unaccommodated passenger volume in 2040 is only a small part of the total forecast passenger volume; however, it is much more important for particular world regions and airports. The main reason for this development is that mitigation measures such as expanding airport capacity and increasing aircraft size increasingly
TABLE 10.13 Top 20 airports in terms of unaccommodated passenger volume in 2040. No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
1
DEL
Delhi Indira Gandhi
599
159
265
46.0
22.4
100.0
2
BOM
Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji
447
123
276
42.1
25.5
100.0
3
CGK
Jakarta Soekarno Hatta
629
152
242
41.8
21.5
100.0
4
ATL
Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson
974
195
200
33.6
14.7
100.0
5
LHR
London Heathrow
523
144
275
25.2
14.9
100.0
6
ORD
Chicago O’Hare
945
144
153
20.7
12.5
100.0
7
BLR
Bengaluru Kempegowda
274
65
237
17.6
21.3
100.0
8
KUL
Kuala Lumpur
593
140
236
9.4
6.3
100.0
9
MNL
Manila Ninoy Aquino
442
113
256
7.7
6.4
100.0
10
LAX
Los Angeles
814
167
205
7.1
4.1
100.0
11
DFW
Dallas/Fort Worth
881
130
148
6.1
4.4
100.0 (Continued )
TABLE 10.13 (Continued) No.
IATA code
Airport name
Aircraft movements (thousand)
Passengers (million)
Aircraft size
Unaccommodated passengers (million)
Share of unaccommodated passengers (%)
Capacity utilisation (%)
12
DXB
Dubai
669
241
360
6.3
2.6
94.8
13
SIN
Singapore Changi
599
146
244
5.7
3.8
73.0
14
HYD
Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi
211
51
240
5.5
9.8
42.8
15
SGN
Tan Son Nhat
430
103
240
5.3
4.9
100.0
16
MAA
Chennai
261
60
229
5.2
8.0
66.2
17
CCU
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
207
52
252
5.0
8.8
55.1
18
BKK
Bangkok Suvarnabhumi
547
141
257
4.3
2.9
100.0
19
SZX
Shenzhen Bao’an
547
124
227
4.1
3.2
100.0
20
SUB
Juanda
330
66
199
3.8
5.5
62.6
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reach their limits regarding their maximum level and growth rate, respectively, despite the fact that factors driving passenger demand volume growth decline slightly between 2030 and 2040, which releases some pressure from airport capacities.
10.5 Assessing mitigation strategies In discussing general strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints, we have stated from the outset that each constrained airport has specific capacity problems and that solutions to capacity problems vary from airport to airport and from region to region, depending on the severity and type of the capacity bottleneck, the financial situation of the airport and the regulatory framework of the region or state, which the airport operator has to take into account in planning for the future. Our intention has been to analyse, on a global level, measures and options that have been successfully applied at airports and, therefore, may be recommended for further use. On the contrary, theoretical discussions, which do not contribute to reducing the capacity problem, should not be recommended accordingly. We have seen that a whole range of technological, investment and noninvestment options does theoretically exist, and furthermore, that a spectrum of supply and demand management measures may be applied, ranging from pure administrative measures such as regulations, hybrid measures, such as slot coordination with secondary slot trading, to market-based options, such as congestion pricing schemes and primary slot trading. In Table 5.1, we have shown a typology of these mitigation measures, whereby some of them have not yet been commonly applied, such as congestion pricing, since landing fees are regulated in many countries. We have concluded that rerouting of flights to secondary and less congested airports has been regarded by airlines as an undesirable measure and has not been widely used, in particular not at hubs, because of the interrelationship of incoming and outgoing flights. Of similar nature is the temporal shifting of flights to off-peak periods at the same airport. Nevertheless, this measure has been applied by slot coordinators at Level 3 airports, when airlines requested slots at peak times. These slots, however, were only available at off-peak times. The analysis has further shown that two mitigation measures new runways as an investment option and increasing seat capacity per flight as an operational measure have proven to be more effective than the other measures. The forecasts of passenger and flight volumes have therefore incorporated these measures, in addition to the prevailing measures of utilising runways and raising load factors as much as possible when and where needed. In the following, we discuss the forecast results with an emphasis on evaluating the absolute and relative effects of employing larger aircraft here measured in passengers per flight and enhancing runway utilisation and runway capacity enlargements.
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10.5.1 How do increasing aircraft size and adding new runways contribute to airport capacity improvements up to 2030 and 2040? Passenger volumes on links between airports and regions were forecast in a first phase in relation to mainly socio-economic factors. Future passenger volumes are thus reflecting the market demand without being constrained by a lack of infrastructure capacity. The methodological approach of forecasting passenger flows and flight volumes between airports and regions was conceived in a following phase in such a way that forecast horizon year capacities were estimated and future airport flight volumes in particular were mirrored against capacities. The forecast results have to be interpreted therefore as ‘capacity constrained’ estimates, which do not include passenger and flight volumes that cannot be accommodated due to bottlenecks caused by airports with insufficient capacity. We show, however, the unaccommodated demand as well, in order to provide information on the amount of future capacity constraint. Depending on the shortage of capacity reserves and/or the amount of unaccommodated flights, runway utilisation was intensified up to airport-specific limits, and load factor as well as seat capacity of flights were increased up to route type-specific limits. While the measures of increasing runway utilisation and load factors contribute rather modestly to mitigating capacity problems at constrained airports due to the already high degree of runway and seat capacity utilisation, higher seat capacities of aircraft and additional runways have proven to be effective measures for overcoming capacity shortages at these airports, which are in many instances major airports, in particular hubs with the largest traffic volumes. At non-constrained airports often secondary airports and those with mainly origin destination traffic increasing runway utilisation and raising load factors of flights in addition to employing aircraft with higher seat capacity are measures of first choice and contribute to overcoming future constraint situations to a higher degree than at already congested airports. In any case, all these measures have been applied in forecasting passenger and flight volumes of airports. In the following section, we present those forecast results for 2030 and 2040 which deal with the absolute and relative capacity gain due to increasing primarily passengers per flight, on the one hand, and improving runway utilisation and enlarging runway capacity, on the other. The measures of seat capacity per flight and load factor have been taken care of implicitly in the forecast by applying the product of these variables, that is, the number of passengers per flight.
10.5.1.1 Up to 2030 As presented and commented upon in the previous chapters, the forecast of passenger and flight volumes yields among others the following global forecast results for the year 2030: G G
flight volume: 45.8 million (2016: 35.5 million) flight volume growth 2030/16: 129%, 1.8% p.a.
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261
passenger volume: 6.9 billion (2016: 4.0 billion) passenger volume growth 2030/16: 176%, 4.1% p.a. unaccommodated passenger volume: 49.4 million total (unconstrained) passenger volume:6.963 billion
Regarding the mitigation measures, the following forecast results were obtained for the time period 2016 to 2030: G
G
G G
capacity gain by more passengers per flight (average aircraft size in 2016: 111 passengers per flight, in 2030: 152 passengers per flight): 1765 million passengers capacity gain by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 1220 million passengers capacity gain share by more passengers per flight: 59% capacity gain share by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 41%
While the number of passengers transported in the global network increases by 76% from 2016 to 2030, the flight volume grows by only 29%. The growth difference results from the fact that the average seat capacity per flight multiplied by the load factor grows from 111 to 152 passengers per flight. In 2030 almost three billion passengers more than in 2016 will use the planes, and 59% of the passenger volume growth (1.8 billion passengers) can be accounted for by higher seat capacity and higher load factors per flight, while 41% (1.2 billion passengers) are attributable to higher capacity due to more runways and higher utilisation of runways. It is, thus, interesting to note that in our forecast, the measure of deploying larger aircraft will provide more additional capacity than better utilisation of runways and new runway capacity. The improvement of these measures is also one factor responsible for just a relatively small number of unaccommodated passengers (49 million or 0.7% of the total unconstrained passenger volume) in 2030. It should be added that the forecast methodology has not been conceived so as to produce biased results by preferring one type of measure against others. The realisation probabilities of single measures are primarily based on empirical functions rather than on scenario-type assumptions. The current situation of air transport demand and traffic supply varies from country to country and from world region to world region. It is therefore advisable to not only focus on global results but also to study regional forecast outcomes. Here, we concentrate again on the capacity gain due to increasing aircraft size, which means passengers per flight, and higher runway utilisation and capacity, which means more runways. In Figs 10.10 and 10.11, the regional distribution of capacity gain is shown; in Fig. 10.10 due to more passengers per flight and in Fig. 10.11 due to higher runway utilisation and capacity. Both figures give the capacity gain in terms of additional passengers served at airports as a consequence of realising the capacity
PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
Million
Capacity gain by larger aircraft in annual passenger volume
262
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0 Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
Million
Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and enlargements in annual passenger volume
FIGURE 10.10 Capacity gain by employing larger aircraft (that means more passengers per flight), measured in annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2030 by region; global sum is 1765 million passengers.
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0 Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.11 Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and runway enlargements measured in annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2030 by region; global sum is 1220 million passengers.
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shortage mitigating measures. The scales of the vertical axes are the same in both figures so that the effectiveness of the two types of measures can be compared directly. As passenger volumes vary greatly between the world regions so do the capacity gains. The passenger volumes of the three major regions of Asia, Europe and North America contribute with 5.7 billion (around 82%) to the global volume of 6.9 billion passengers in 2030. The capacity gains in these major world regions are corresponding high. Asia is the region with the highest passenger volume of 2.6 billion passengers with a passenger growth between 2016 and 2030 of 1.3 billion, of which 58% are handled by larger aircraft with higher load factors and 42% by better runway utilisation and capacity enlargements at Asian airports. Passenger growth in Europe and North America is, with 586 million and 563 million passengers respectively, less than half as large as in Asia. The passenger volumes are 1.6 and 1.5 billion passengers in 2030. In Europe and North America, 62% of the passenger growth is realised through more passengers per flight and 38% through higher runway utilisation and capacity enlargements. The capacity gain caused by employing larger aircraft is, thus, in the three major regions as well as in the other regions, more effective than the measure of higher runway utilisation and more runways. While airlines are constantly enlarging their fleets with aircraft with higher seat capacity and succeed in raising load factors, major airports, in particular, have problems building new runways or even new airports. The measure of transporting more passengers per flight has proven to be in the past and will be in future the single most effective non-investment measure of mitigating airport capacity constraints. According to the forecast the average number of passengers per flight will grow from 111 in 2016 by 41 to 152 passengers per flight in 2030.
10.5.1.2 Between 2030 and 2040 We first present the main global forecast results in order to better relate the capacity gain to total passenger volumes of the year 2040. The forecast of passenger and flight volumes yields among others the following global forecast results for the year 2040: G G
G G
G G
flight volume: 52.7 million (2016: 35.5 million) flight volume growth 2040/30: 115%, 1.4% p.a.; 2040/16: 148%, 1.7% p.a. passenger volume: 9.4 billion (2016: 4.0 billion) passenger volume growth 2040/30: 136%, 3.1% p.a.; 2040/16: 1138%, 3.7% p.a. unaccommodated passenger volume: 255.5 million total (unconstrained) passenger volume: 9.630 billion
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Regarding the mitigation measures, the following forecast results were obtained for the time period 2030 to 2040: G
G
G G
capacity gain by more passengers per flight (average aircraft size in 2030: 152 passengers per flight, in 2040: 179 passengers per flight): 1375 million passengers (2030: 1765 million) capacity gain by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 1079 million passengers (2030: 1220 million) capacity gain share by more passengers per flight: 56% capacity gain share by increasing runway utilisation and higher runway capacity: 44%
Global flight volume will increase further by 15% in the second forecast period from 2030 to 2040; passenger volume will grow even more by 36% to about 9.4 billion passengers. Compared with the base year 2016, the overall demand is forecast to more than double and grow by 138%. Compared with 2030, another 2.5 billion passengers will use the air transport system in 2040 and will fly in even larger aircraft; the average number of passengers per flight will continue to rise to almost 180 passengers. About 56% of the passenger growth can be attributed to the effect of larger aircraft with higher load factors and 44% to the measure of higher runway utilisation and more runway capacity. As in the previous forecast period, the capacity gain stemming from more passengers per flight will be higher than the runway utilisation and enlargements effect, however, with a relative gain of the latter effect. The number of unaccommodated passengers will grow disproportionately to more than 255 million passengers, accounting for around 2.6% of the global passenger volume. Although this share seems to be rather small due to the effectiveness of the mitigation measures applied, capacity shortages especially at major airports will become more severe. As has been shown in discussing the forecast results in detail, major airports will have much higher shares of unaccommodated passengers than secondary airports because the investment options are typically difficult to realise at high-volume airports, as has already been the case in the past. The capacity gain due to increasing aircraft size, here passengers per flight, and better runway utilisation and capacity extensions (that means more runways) by world region is shown in Figs 10.12 and 10.13. The passenger volume of the three major world regions, Asia, Europe and North America, will grow to more than 7.6 billion passengers; the volume share of these regions will slightly lose in relative importance and decrease to 81%. While the passenger volume of Asia continues to grow disproportionately high to 3.7 billion passengers, the volumes of Europe and North America will grow at a disproportionately slower pace to around two billion each. In all three regions, growth rates will be lower than in the first forecast period to 2030.
Million
Capacity gain by larger aircraft in annual passenger volume
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800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0 Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
Million
Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and enlargements in annual passenger volume
FIGURE 10.12 Capacity gain by employing larger aircraft (that means more passengers per flight) measured in annual passenger volume between 2030 and 2040 by region; global sum is 1375 million passengers.
800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Africa Africa
Asia
Asia Europe
Europe Middle East
Middle East North America
North America South America
South America
Southwest Pacific
Southwest Pacific
FIGURE 10.13 Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and enlargements measured in annual passenger volume between 2030 and 2040 by region; global sum is 1079 million passengers.
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PART | III Forecasting future air traffic development up to 2040
Average aircraft size and the degree of capacity shortage vary in all seven regions, however, the relative mitigation effect of increasing aircraft size, measured in passengers per flight, will be stronger than the measure of utilising runways more intensively and building more runways in all regions, except in the Southwest Pacific, where the aircraft size effect at 46% is lower than the runway effect. While the aircraft size measure contributes with 56% to the total capacity constraint mitigation worldwide, this measure at 64% is highest in Africa, followed by 61% in Europe, 58% in North America, 55% in the Middle East and 54% in Asia. The reasons for the variation of these mitigation effects are most likely to be found in local and country-specific conditions of transport policy and airport circumstances, such as varying airport size and degree of airport congestion. In the following section, we take a more detailed look at the relationship between flight volume and aircraft size and the development of this relationship at airports from 2016 to 2040 in all world regions.
10.5.2 General mitigation measures in world regions The question is as follows: can we draw some general conclusions from the analysis in the global network and in world region networks and give recommendations on capacity restraint mitigation strategies? Clearly, airportspecific recommendations regarding the enlargement of capacity can be deduced only from an analysis of future needs of capacity of that specific airport. On the other hand, the driving factor of employing larger aircraft lies within the strategic planning of airlines, and this measure affects the capacity needs of airports with hardly any possibility for them to interfere and influence this process. The capacity planning of airports concentrates more on the investment option of enlarging infrastructure capacity. Since both system partners airlines and airports affect future capacity needs of airports, there may be a case for a combined airport-specific, as well as a general capacity planning, strategy. Given this hypothesis, we want to derive some general recommendations on capacity mitigation strategies. Before looking at mitigation strategies, we want to highlight the different effects of the two optional mitigation types, the aircraft size and the runway measure, on the relative capacity gain. Fig. 10.14 shows the relationships between capacity gain and aircraft size growth (including higher load factors) and enlargement of runway capacity (including higher runway utilisation by more aircraft movements). As can be seen, there is a linear relationship between capacity gain and rising aircraft size. The more passengers are carried per flight the higher is the capacity gain, with the result that the throughput of a runway increases in terms of passengers carried per hour without the need to increase runway capacity in terms of flights per hour. There is a great probability that the linear relationship does not hold forever. At some point, in the future, aircraft
Capacity gain in %
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Long-term maximum viable aircraft size
Short-term maximum viable aircraft size
Increasing number of runways / increasing aircraft size Capacity gain by adding runways Capacity gain by adding runways, weighted by realisation probability Capacity gain by increasing aircraft size
FIGURE 10.14 Comparing capacity gains achieved by increasing the number of runways at an airport and by increasing aircraft size.
capacity will most likely grow more slowly until there comes a limit of aircraft size, based on technical and/or economic reasons. In our forecast, however, we do not yet see such saturation tendencies. The pace of employing larger aircraft will slow down somewhat in the second forecast period from 2030 to 2040; however, due to the fact that some capacity bottlenecks will continue to exist and others may develop, the average size of aircraft will increase from 111 passengers per flight in 2016 to 152 in 2030 and continue to grow to 179 passengers per flight in 2040. The effect of enlarging runway capacity is quite different (see upper function). Adding a new runway offers a capacity gain of around 40 flight movements per hour, if the airport is a single-runway airport and both runways can be operated independently. The relative capacity gain amounts, in such a case, to around 100%. Since the vast majority of airports worldwide have only one runway, such an investment would yield a significant growth in throughput in terms of flights per hour. The more runways an airport has the smaller becomes the relative gain in capacity by adding another runway, as has been explained in Chapter 7, Modelling future airport capacity and capacity utilisation (see Table 7.4). For example, an airport already operating with four runways, as we find often in North America, will gain only about 20% of the capacity of a single runway by adding a new runway. The option of enlarging runway capacity loses importance with the number of runways in operation and traffic volume, because of the growing complexity of flight operations, until the marginal benefit diminishes almost completely. The runway
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option is, thus, primarily a first choice of airports with only one or a few runways. We have seen in the past and can also see in the forecast that, in particular, major airports with high traffic volumes and a hub function are often confronted with the need to raise the capacity and, at the same time, have great problems pursuing such projects. Taking these circumstances into consideration, we have to admit that in a probabilistic sense the relative gain in adding capacity by new runways becomes less realistic. The effect of the lower realisation probability has been at least in an abstract form accounted for in the lower function of Fig. 10.14. For the airport population as a whole, the relative gain in capacity will diminish fast when these enlargement measures are concentrated on major airports, which already have a high runway capacity. Their chances of realising new runway capacity are in general relatively small as compared with secondary and smaller airports; for the former the option of being served with larger aircraft will offer relatively more benefits. Having discussed the different effects of the two types of mitigation measures in general, we will now identify the position of airports worldwide and in world regions with respect to average aircraft size and flight volume at these airports in 2016 and as forecast for 2030 and 2040, and derive some general mitigation strategies for airports in each world region, depending on these two characteristics. Fig. 10.15 shows the distribution of all airports
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‘Gradual increase of aircraft size’ III
2016: 13.1% (11.0%) 2030: 1.9% (1.2%) 2040: 1.2% (0.7%)
2016: 29.2% (36.6%) 2030: 49.9% (56.0%) 2040: 55.0% (60.3%)
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600
400
200
‘New runway or increase of aircraft size’ I
‘New runway’ II
0 0
50 2016: 31.2% (21.6%) 2030: 14.6% (7.2%) 2040: 9.6% (4.0%)
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150 200 250 Passengers per flight (aircraft size) 2016
2030
2040
300
350
400
2016: 26.5% (30.8%) 2030: 33.6% (35.6%) 2040: 34.2% (35.0%)
FIGURE 10.15 Global classification of airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of global aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of global passenger volume).
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regarding their traffic volume (vertical axis) and average aircraft size, which means passengers per flight (horizontal axis). Each point in the diagram represents aircraft movements and average aircraft size data of a specific airport for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040. The distribution of airports shows that, by far, most of the airports are situated in the low range of flight volume, which means from very small volumes to around 200,000 movements per year over the whole range of average aircraft sizes to around 400 passengers per flight. A small number of airports will, in future years, reach volumes of up to one million movements and even more with aircraft sizes between around 120 and 250 passengers per flight. The diagram is divided into four quadrants, separated by a horizontal line at a value of 200,000 aircraft movements and a vertical line at 111 passengers per flight. The volume dividing line has been selected as a practical annual service volume of a single runway. The capacity of a runway may be higher, say around 240,000 movements, but the limit of 200,000 corresponds with a service volume that can be handled with a high level of service. The vertical line represents the average aircraft size of 111 passengers in 2016. Airports in these quadrants are characterised by certain ranges of flight volume and aircraft size. Airports with small flight volumes and aircraft can be found in quadrant I. Airports with small traffic volumes, but with higher numbers of passengers per flight, are in quadrant II, whereas airports with greater flight volumes as well as aircraft size are located in quadrant III. Finally, airports with high volumes and rather small aircraft are in quadrant IV. The general mitigation strategies vary with the position of airports regarding their volume and aircraft size. While airports in quadrant I handled, in 2016, 22% of the global passenger demand and 31% of the flight volume, their relative importance will go down with the growth of traffic in future. In 2030 the airports remaining in this category will handle only 7% of the passenger demand and 15% of the traffic; this trend will continue to the year 2040. Airports in quadrant I would take full advantage of both mitigation types, that is increasing aircraft size as well as runway capacity, provided that they have the choice of realising these options. As mentioned above, the investment option can be proactively pursued by airport operators, whereas the aircraft size option depends on the fleet and network strategy of airlines serving the airport. The percentage of airports of this type with capacity problems is compared with larger airports rather small. Airports in quadrant II handle larger aircraft, however, rather small traffic volumes. These airports will gain in importance; their traffic share will rise from 27% in 2016 to 34% in 2030, while their passenger volume share will rise from 31% to 36%. In the following period, from 2030 to 2040, their traffic share will not further increase. About one-third of the total traffic will thus be handled by airports in this quadrant. These airports would primarily benefit from enlarging runway capacity. A new runway would double the capacity if the new runway could be realised so that flight operations on
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each runway can be managed independently from each other. Increasing aircraft size would be a secondary option, especially for those airports with average aircraft sizes in the range of 120 200 passengers per flight. Airports with higher traffic volumes and large average aircraft size belong to a higher percentage to those with capacity problems. Airports in quadrant III form this category and mitigation strategies are often needed here more than at airports in other quadrants. In 2016 airports of this category handled a traffic share of 29%, and in 2030 their share will rise to 50%. Their importance will continue to grow until 2040, when they will handle a traffic share of 55%. The passenger volume share goes up correspondingly from 37% to 60% in 2040. This group of airports will be, thus, the most important group. Most of the airports handle aircraft ranging in their size between 120 and 230 passengers per flight; hence, a gradual increase of aircraft size might be the most beneficial strategy to cope with capacity shortages. For airports with traffic volumes of below around 400,000 movements per year, an investment in a new runway may be an option, too, especially if their average aircraft size already exceeds around 230 passengers per flight. For airports with very high traffic volumes, new runways provide a relatively small additional value. A solution may rather be to open a new airport in the same agglomeration, as is the case in Beijing. In such a case the full capacity gain may be realised by the additional runway system. The airports in quadrant IV handle high traffic volumes with aircraft of rather small size of below 111 passengers per flight. There are only relatively few airports of this type, and as can be seen in Fig. 10.15, their traffic share was very small in 2016 and is diminishing in future. Their first mitigation strategy would be to handle more and more aircraft of larger size, thereby increasing the passenger throughput per runway without raising the flight volume correspondingly. Since the occurrence of airports of this type will be negligible in future, mitigation strategies would not really contribute to solving the global capacity problem. As we have seen, airports with high traffic volumes, as well as aircraft with many passengers on board (in quadrant III), represent both the most important group as measured by their traffic share of the global traffic, as well as the most problematic ones, since they have the highest share of airports with highly utilised infrastructure with partly severe capacity constraints. Solutions to mitigate the capacity problem vary, certainly from airport to airport. As a general strategy, we would propose, first, a further increase of aircraft size and, second, new runway capacity for airports with a small number of runways and, for airports with a complex runway system, new capacity in the form of a new airport nearby. We have to state, however, that for a series of airports of this group the proposed strategies may be out of the question due to local and political constraints. The second most important airport group consists of airports with traffic volumes below 200,000 annual aircraft movements and aircraft with a size
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exceeding 111 passengers per flight (in quadrant II). The general mitigation strategy would be an investment into additional runway capacity and, only second, for airports with relatively small aircraft of up to 200 passengers per flight, more flights with more passenger capacity. Here again, new runways may be not a feasible solution in many instances for airport-specific reasons, and airports have to rely on non-investment solutions such as a growth of average aircraft size. After examination of the global development, we now analyse airport strategies in world regions since airport sizes, developmental conditions and traffic growth patterns vary from region to region. In addition, the mitigation strategies proposed may be better tailored to the needs of airports in each region. Africa is a continent with a rather low air traffic volume of nearly 1.1 million flights on almost 390 airports in 2016. This is forecast to grow above average to more than 1.4 million flights in 2030 and further to 1.6 million flights in 2040. Fig. 10.16 shows the distribution of African airports regarding their aircraft movements and passengers per flight numbers in 2016, 2030 and 2040. Quite in contrast to the airport size structure in the global network, 60% of the traffic of all airports in Africa has been handled in 2016 by small airports with low traffic volumes and numbers of passengers per flight below the global average of 111 passengers (in quadrant I), with a passenger share
1200 ‘Gradually increase aircraft size’ III
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2016: 0.0% (0.0%) 2030: 16.8% (18.6%) 2040: 17.8% (18.7%)
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2030: 0.0% (0.0%) 2040: 0.0% (0.0%)
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JNB
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‘New runway or increase of aircraft size’ NBO I
‘New runway’ II
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50
2016: 59.8% (48.7%) 2030: 23.0% (11.9%) 2040: 16.1% (7.2%)
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2016
2030
2040
300
350
400
2016: 30.4% (40.1%) 2030: 60.2% (69.5%) 2040: 66.1% (74.1%)
FIGURE 10.16 Classification of African airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of African aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at African airports).
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of almost 50%. Due to the traffic growth foreseen, airports will partly move into quadrant II and handle more aircraft movements with more passengers per flight. In 2016 30% of the traffic in Africa was handled by airports in this group. This share will double in 2030 and further grow to 66% in 2040, when these airports will handle almost three quarters of the passenger volume of Africa. Airports with high traffic volumes and high numbers of passengers per flight in quadrant III will gain in importance as well but will not reach a traffic share of all airports of more than 18%. The traffic importance of African airports in quadrant IV with high traffic volumes, but with small aircraft is very small and negligible in future. For airports with capacity constraints in Africa, which are in quadrant I, mitigation strategies could be new runways and/or increasing aircraft size, since most of these airports are rather small, most likely with one runway, and being served with aircraft of low seat capacity. Two example airports are depicted in Fig. 10.16, Johannesburg (JNB) and Nairobi (NBO); JNB is the largest airport in Africa with slightly more than 200,000 passengers in 2016 and equipped with two parallel runways, whereas NBO is a mediumsized airport with around 100,000 passengers and one runway. Both airports can grow on existing infrastructure without facing greater capacity problems in future. Passenger growth can be handled by aircraft growing in size correspondingly. The average number of passengers per flight in Africa was 96 in 2016; this figure is expected to grow to 134 in 2030, which is still well below the global average of 152 passengers. In 2016 Asia handled a traffic volume of 10.4 million flights on more than 920 airports, carrying 1.3 billion passengers. Each flight had on average 130 passengers on board, almost 20 passengers more than the global average. Asia has not only the highest traffic share of all regions but is also the region with the highest passenger volume growth of 4.9% p.a. between 2016 and 2030 so that the number of passengers will grow to more than 2.6 billion on 14.6 million flights. Demand will continue to grow until 2040 to almost 3.7 billion passengers. Outstanding examples of traffic size and growth are the two hub airports of Beijing, Capital City (PEK) and Daxing (PKX), which are shown among others in Fig. 10.17. Most of the airports in Asia are larger than those in Africa, and especially small airports in quadrant I play only a marginal role in handling traffic in future. The traffic share of airports with small traffic volumes and aircraft with high numbers of passengers per flight (in quadrant II) will decrease from 42% in 2016 to 39% in 2030 and further on to 35% in 2040, whereas the traffic share of airports with both high traffic volumes and flights with many passengers on board (in quadrant III) will grow to 56% in 2030 and to 62% in 2040. Airports in Asia are typically confronted with high traffic growth rates, as can be particularly seen in the example of the largest Asian airport Beijing Capital City (PEK) in 2016. The traffic will almost double from more than 600,000 aircraft movements in 2016 to almost 1.2 million in
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2016: 41.2% (47.1%) 2030: 56.4% (60.8%) 2040: 62.2% (65.5%)
2016: 0.0% (0.0%) 2030: 0.0% (0.0%) 2040: 0.0% (0.0%)
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‘New runway or ITM increase of aircraft size, I
CJU
‘New runway’ II
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50 2016: 16.4% (11.0%) 2030: 4.4% (2.0%) 2040: 2.5% (0.9%)
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150 200 250 Passengers per flight (aircraft size) 2016
2030
2040
300
350
400
2016: 42.4% (41.9%) 2030: 39.2% (37.2%) 2040: 35.3% (33.6%)
FIGURE 10.17 Classification of Asian airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of Asian aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at Asian airports).
2040, and most of the growth is accomplished by a new airport with sufficient runway capacity. Average aircraft size will also grow by 87, from 159 passengers to 246 passengers per flight, in the same period. PEK is an outstanding example of a large airport where a first choice strategy to mitigate capacity shortages would be to increase aircraft size further but, if possible, create new runway capacity by building a new airport (PKX). Given the strong growth of traffic in Asia, we would recommend for airports with limited runway capacity in quadrant II a new runway or two, and for airports with more capacity available (in quadrant III) a further increase of aircraft size. In both cases, however, we would not exclude the alternative strategy, which is larger aircraft for airports in quadrant II and new runways for airports in quadrant III as a secondary option. For airports with multiple runways, we do not recommend as a first choice new runway capacity on the same airport, but instead on a secondary airport in the same agglomeration, as the example of Beijing shows. Two other examples are shown in Fig. 10.17, the development of more typical airports of Osaka (ITM) and Jeju (CJU). Both airports have traffic volumes below the practical capacity of a single runway of 200,000 movements and participate in the traffic growth in Asia. Both airports can still handle the growing traffic by increasing average aircraft size without a need to realise an investment option. If capacity constraints become a problem, we would recommend a runway capacity extension as a first option.
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Europe is an important traffic region, too, with 685 airports and a traffic volume of 8.3 million flights in 2016. Some 980 million passengers were carried on these flights, which had an average aircraft size of 118 passengers. European airports are similarly distributed as Asian airports regarding traffic volume and average aircraft size. However, Europe does not have an airport as large as Beijing Capital City (PEK). The distribution and development of airports in Europe is shown in Fig. 10.18. Traffic at European airports was roughly equally distributed in 2016 over the three quadrants I III with about 30% each in 2016, although the passenger demand share grew from 21% at smaller airports to 34% at airports with volumes of less than 200,000 aircraft movements per year in quadrant II and to 40% at the large airports with more traffic and larger aircraft in quadrant III. Traffic share at small airports will diminish in future, while airports in quadrants II and III will take over and handle more and more traffic. Large airports with more flights of larger aircraft size will handle even more than airports in quadrant II, which still have rather small traffic volumes. Airports struggling with capacity constraints are mainly in quadrant III, such as two of the example airports: London Heathrow (LHR) and London Gatwick (LGW). Both airports are in need of substantial capacity growth, however, have not yet succeeded in realising new runway projects due to public resistance. Their traffic and aircraft size developments are shown in Fig. 10.18. According to the forecast, LHR will grow almost exclusively by aircraft size, while LGW will get a capacity extension and grow by traffic 1200
1000
Aircraft movements
‘Gradually increase aircraft size’ III
‘Increase aircraft size’ IV
2016: 35.4% (40.3%) 2030: 47.8% (52.2%) 2040: 51.3% (55.2%)
2016: 5.5% (4.9%) 2030: 1.0% (0.6%) 2040: 1.0% (0.6%)
800
600
FRA
LHR
400 LGW
200
‘New runway’ II
GVA
0
‘New runway or STR increase of aircraft size’ I 0
50
2016: 29.6% (21.2%) 2030: 11.1% (5.6%) 2040: 6.6% (2.6%)
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150 200 250 Passengers per flight (aircraft size) 2016
2030
2040
300
350
400
2016: 29.5% (33.6%) 2030: 40.1% (41.6%) 2040: 41.2% (41.6%)
FIGURE 10.18 Classification of European airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of European aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at European airports).
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volume as well as by aircraft size. With four runways, Frankfurt airport still has capacity reserves and can grow by traffic volume and aircraft size without additional runway capacity. Two other example airports of smaller size are depicted in Fig. 10.18, namely Geneva (GVA) and Stuttgart (STR), each with one runway. Both airports will grow without new runways in the forecast period by handling more aircraft with more passengers on board. Although the general recommendations derived on the global level apply to Europe as well, airports with capacity constraints in Europe have, in many instances, severe problems with enlarging capacity. We would recommend new runways for airports with capacity bottlenecks in quadrant II, but we admit, however, that the realisation chances are not great, if at all. This means that airports in Europe have primarily to rely on the growth of aircraft size in order to cope with further traffic growth. For capacity constrained airports with high traffic volumes and aircraft size (in quadrant III), we would recommend, first, a further increase of aircraft size. However, we would also recommend capacity growth, knowing the problems associated with investment proposals for European airports. It seems that airports in Europe of this type, and other types as well, are in a particularly difficult position to realise plans to add runway capacity because the population living around airports and local politics oppose such proposals, often successfully, on grounds of nuisance, noise and gaseous emissions. The Middle East region is, with 111 airports and a flight volume of 1.2 million, one of the smaller air traffic regions. As can be seen in Fig. 10.19, Dubai airport (DXB) stands out as a prominent airport, while most others are smaller and can be found mainly in quadrants II and III. While the relative traffic importance of smaller airports in quadrant II will remain the same with around 45% of all aircraft movements in the Middle East but with a declining importance of passenger demand, larger airports in quadrant III will take over and increase their share of traffic volume from 36% to 53% in 2040. As a general strategy for capacity constrained airports here, we would recommend raising the capacity by adding new runways, since average aircraft size is already above average in many instances. According to the forecast, DXB will grow from around 400,000 aircraft movements in 2016 to almost 670,000 movements in 2040. This growth will be realised through both new runway capacity as well as larger aircraft size. Average aircraft size will thereby increase further by about 140 passengers per flight, from around 220 to 360, a size reached by just a few large airports worldwide. Riyadh airport (RUH) has less than 200,000 movements and is only half as large as DXB. Here, traffic is expected to grow to almost 300,000 movements in 2040. To accomplish the traffic growth the airport will use both existing runways more intensively with aircraft which will grow in size from about 140 to around 220 passengers per flight. In 2016 North America had more than 1000 airports and a flight volume of ten million flights. It was almost as important a traffic region as Asia.
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Aircraft movements
‘Gradually increase aircraft size’ III 2016: 36.2% (46.6%) 2030: 51.4% (61.9%) 2040: 53.1% (62.2%)
2016: 0.0% (0.0%) 2030: 0.0% (0.0%) 2040: 0.0% (0.0%)
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600
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200
‘New runway or increase of aircraft size’ I
RUH
‘New runway’ II
0
0
50 2016: 18.6% (11.9%) 2030: 1.3% (0.5%) 2040: 0.5% (0.2%)
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150 200 250 Passengers per flight (aircraft size) 2016
2030
2040
300
350
400
2016: 45.2% (41.5%) 2030: 47.3% (37.6%) 2040: 46.4% (37.6%)
FIGURE 10.19 Classification of airports of the Middle East according to mitigation strategies and their share of aircraft movements at airports of the Middle East for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at airports of the Middle East).
The passenger volume was greater in Asia with 1.3 billion passengers, more than in North America which had 0.9 billion passengers. The reason for the difference is the average aircraft size; on Asian flights, average aircraft size is highest with 130 passengers per flight, while in North America, only 91 passengers are on board, the lowest value of all regions. North America has mainly domestic US traffic with frequent services with rather small aircraft, whereas the Asian network is served with more international and medium to long range flights with higher seat capacity. The distribution and development of airports regarding their traffic volume and aircraft size in North America is shown in Fig. 10.20. Quite in contrast to the size distribution of airports in other regions, average aircraft size of North American airports varies mainly between 70 and 200 passengers per flight as can be seen in Fig. 10.20. North America also has a higher share of high-volume airports, with Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson (ATL) and Chicago O’Hare (ORD) reaching a threshold of almost one million aircraft movements in 2030 and 2040. While, for the time being, about three-quarters of the traffic in North America is handled by below-average sized aircraft at small- and large-volume airports, traffic volumes and average aircraft size will grow in future so that in 2040 almost two-thirds of the traffic is concentrated on larger airports in quadrant III. For the capacity constrained airports among them, especially for those with complex runway systems, we would recommend a further increase of aircraft size as the more
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2016: 20.3% (27.3%) 2030: 58.4% (67.3%) 2040: 63.7% (72.3%) ATL
800 DFW
600
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SAN
"New runway or increase of aircraft size" I
‘New runway’ II
0 0
50
2016: 37.6% (29.0%) 2030: 24.7% (15.5%) 2040: 17.7% (9.9%)
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2030
2040
300
350
400
2016: 3.5% (4.7%) 2030: 10.8% (12.0%) 2040: 15.0% (15.1%)
FIGURE 10.20 Classification of North American airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of North American aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at North American airports).
efficient strategy, thus improving runway utilisation rather than raising infrastructure capacity. For smaller airports with capacity problems, infrastructure enlargements may be the better choice, if such options are feasible. The development of aircraft size and traffic volume is shown in Fig. 10.20 for three example airports: Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson (ATL), Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) and San Diego (SAN). While ATL and DFW are high-capacity airports with five and seven runways, respectively, SAN belongs to the 30 core airports of the United States, but with one runway only. All three airports have high capacity utilisation rates, whereby ATL is, with about 875,000 movements, operating at capacity level. Traffic volumes will increase in future, most of all in DFW and least in SAN. ATL will enlarge capacity by a new runway in order to cope with demand growth, although one would propose as a general rule for airports with complex runway systems a higher runway utilisation through larger aircraft size. ATL has five parallel runways, and adding another parallel runway would still bring a relatively great capacity increase. DFW has no capacity shortage to handle the future flight volume, while SAN, on the contrary, has no possibility of raising capacity but has to rely on larger aircraft size. South America has 530 airports and a traffic volume of 3.3 million flights in 2016. It is one of the smaller world regions. Traffic is expected to grow to 4.2 million flights in 2030 and to almost five million in 2040. Average aircraft size, with 99 passengers per flight in 2016, is below the global average of 111 and will remain below average in future with values of 133
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‘Increase aircraft size’ IV
2016: 8.2% (10.8%) 2030: 20.8% (24.1%) 2040: 30.9% (36.0%)
2016: 6.4% (6.3%) 2030: 0.0% (0.0%) 2040: 0.0% (0.0%)
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600 MEX
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‘New runway’ II
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50
2016: 51.8% (39.0%) 2030: 25.2% (13.0%) 2040: 13.9% (4.9%)
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2016
2030
2040
300
350
400
2016: 33.6% (43.9%) 2030: 54.0% (62.9%) 2040: 55.2% (59.1%)
FIGURE 10.21 Classification of South American airports according to mitigation strategies and their share of South American aircraft movements for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at South American airports).
passengers in 2030 and 158 in 2040. The development of aircraft size and flight volume of each airport from 2016 to 2030 and 2040 is shown in Fig. 10.21. Most airports in South America have traffic volumes below 200,000 aircraft movements, volumes which can be handled by a single runway. Due to traffic growth the traffic share of small airports with average aircraft size below the average of 111 passengers per flight (in quadrant I) will go down from 52% to 14% in 2040, while the traffic share of airports with larger aircraft size (in quadrant II) will increase from 34% to 55% in 2040, and the traffic share of airports with both larger traffic volumes and aircraft size (in quadrant III) will rise from 8% to 31%. This means, on the other hand, that almost 70% of the South American traffic will be handled in future by rather small-volume airports. For those of them with capacity problems, a general mitigation measure of first choice would be to add another runway and, secondly, to increase runway utilisation by larger average aircraft size. The outstanding airport in South America is Mexico City (MEX) with more than 426,000 aircraft movements in 2016, which is expected to grow to around 681,000 movements in 2040 (see Fig. 10.21). The airport has been operating at a high capacity utilisation rate for years. To accomplish the future growth, MEX will need a substantial capacity enlargement, which is forecast to happen probably and better so by a secondary airport. Therefore the passenger growth will be realised by additional flights rather
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than by an increase of average aircraft size. It will grow from 97 in 2016 to around 143 passengers per flight in 2040, a value still below the South American average of 158 passengers. The long-term growth potential lies therefore in a stronger rise of average aircraft size. The metropolitan area Rio de Janeiro airport has two airports, Rio de Janeiro-Galeao (GIG) as an international airport and Rio de Janeiro Santos Dumont (SDU) for domestic traffic, primarily to Sao Paulo. SDU has a single runway and a traffic volume of around 100,000 aircraft movements (see Fig. 10.21). Traffic is expected to grow to 167,000 movements in 2040, which means that a new runway is not needed. The airport will handle the growing passenger demand mainly by increasing average aircraft size from around 100 passengers per flight to nearly 150 passengers. We see, in both airport examples, that the measure of enlarging infrastructure capacity will not be the solution to cope with growing passenger demand, but rather the option of increasing runway utilisation by larger aircraft size. The Southwest Pacific region with Australia as the main contributor is also one of the smaller traffic regions, with 401 airports and a traffic volume of 1.1 million flights in 2016. According to the forecast, traffic will grow to 1.5 million flights in 2030 and to 1.7 million in 2040. Average aircraft size in 2016 was 97 passengers per flight and thus 14 below the world average of 111, caused mainly by the small aircraft size on about one million domestic flights. This main measure of mitigating capacity shortages grows to about 128 passengers per flight in 2030 and to 148 in 2040 and remains, thereby, below the global average. The development of average aircraft size and traffic volume of each airport in the Southwest Pacific is shown in Fig. 10.22. As in other regions, most of the traffic in the Southwest Pacific is handled by small-volume airports of category I and II; in 2016 almost two-thirds of all flights operated from these airports. Airports with both small volumes and average aircraft size, in particular, will lose traffic in future, and airports with more passengers per flight and with larger volumes will gain correspondingly. Airports of categories II and III handled about half of the traffic in 2016; this share will rise to two-thirds in 2030 and to more than 70% in 2040. Since average aircraft size will not exceed 150 passengers per flight until 2040, and many airports handle traffic volumes of below 400,000 aircraft movements, both mitigation options may be potential candidates for airports with capacity problems, depending on the local situation regarding infrastructure enlargement possibilities. Airports with traffic volumes of below 200,000 aircraft movements would rather prefer a new runway in the case of a need for further runway capacity, while larger airports might look for more flights with more passengers on board, to improve runway utilisation further. Two example airports have been selected, the developments of which are shown in Fig. 10.22. Sydney (SYD) is the airport with the highest traffic volume (about 334,000 aircraft movements in 2016) in the Southwest Pacific
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‘Increase aircraft size’ IV 1000 2016: 0.0% (0.0%)
2016: 34.1% (45.3%) 2030: 42.2% (54.1%) 2040: 43.8% (54.1%)
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FIGURE 10.22 Classification of airports of the Southwest Pacific according to mitigation strategies and their share of aircraft movements at airports of the Southwest Pacific for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (in brackets: airports’ share of passenger volume at airports of the Southwest Pacific).
region. Adelaide (ADL) represents rather an airport of typical size with almost 82,000 movements and is equipped with two crossing runways. It has no capacity problems. Since average aircraft size with less than 100 passengers per flight is rather small, future passenger volume growth can be handled first of all by larger aircraft size and in addition by more flights. SYD has three runways and a capacity of around 550,000 aircraft movements, which is sufficient to handle the growing flight volume in the forecast period until 2040. Therefore no additional runway capacity has been forecast. With an additional 200,000 aircraft movements and an increase of average aircraft size from 128 to 183 passengers per flight, the airport will be in a position to serve the growing passenger demand until 2040. At that time, however, the airport will operate at capacity level, and an enlargement of capacity seems to be needed then. In discussing the airport situation in world regions, we have seen that the share of congested airports as well as the distribution and future development of traffic volumes and average aircraft size of airports vary substantially between regions. This means that mitigation strategies of airports coping with capacity shortfalls differ correspondingly in regions. Africa has a great number of small-volume airports today and in future, with a great range of average aircraft size, which in most cases do not have major capacity problems. With growing passenger demand, traffic volumes at airports will grow as well; however, airports will not reach volumes of more than
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200,000 aircraft movements in most instances. Options to react to capacity constraints would be, first, new runways and, second, more passengers per flight. Asia is, in contrast, the most important traffic region worldwide and has a high share of airports with large traffic volumes and average aircraft size. More than 40% of the traffic of Asia is handled by these airports today, which will increase to more than 60% in 2040. Twenty-two of the top 50 airports worldwide with high capacity utilisation are located in Asia (see Table 7.1). In addition, Asian airports have to cope with high traffic growth rates. For airports with smaller traffic volumes, but with large average aircraft size, which need additional capacity, we would first recommend new runways, whereas for the larger airports with larger aircraft size, a further increase of average aircraft size may be more appropriate. Given the strong growth of passenger demand, we know, however, that the latter may need additional runway capacity as well. Traffic of European airports is fairly evenly distributed over smaller airports with low average aircraft size, airports with small traffic volumes and larger aircraft size, and airports with higher volumes with more passengers on board. Only the latter two groups of airports will gain in importance in future. Although traffic growth will be smaller in Europe than in Asia and North America, Europe has been and will remain a region where airports with capacity constraints face great problems of enhancing runway capacity by new infrastructure. Eleven of the 50 top airports worldwide with high capacity utilisation rates can be found in Europe. Improving runway utilisation by increasing average aircraft size will probably be the main mitigation strategy. Air traffic volumes of North American airports vary over a wide range, but most of them handle rather small aircraft; more than 70% of the traffic is handled by airports with below-average aircraft size. This will change in future. In 2030 almost 60% of the traffic will be handled by large airports with aircraft with high seat capacity. A great number of airports with high traffic volumes have more or less capacity constraints, and thirteen of the top 50 airports in terms of high capacity utilisation worldwide in 2016 are in North America. For these airports, we would strongly recommend, to cope with the growing demand, increasing average aircraft size. Adding new runways at airports with complex runway systems is most likely not the most efficient strategy. The three remaining regions of the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific are traffic regions with fewer airports and with smaller flight volumes than the three large regions of Asia, North America and Europe. Most of the traffic is handled by rather small-volume airports with a wide range of average aircraft size, in the Middle East and the Southwest Pacific more than 60% and in South America even more than 80%. The largest airports of these regions are Dubai (DXB), Mexico City (MEX) and
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Sydney (SYD), which will be able to grow by means of a new airport and, as in the case of SYD, by improving runway utilisation by more aircraft and higher average aircraft size. For the other airports with capacity problems, we would recommend new runway infrastructure as well; however, a better utilisation of runways by larger aircraft should always be a strategy to follow if appropriate.
10.6 Case study: traffic forecast for San Diego (SAN), London Heathrow (LHR), Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX) This is the final part of the case study of the three example airports San Diego, London Heathrow and Beijing Capital City, which now includes a fourth airport, the second fully fledged hub airport Beijing Daxing (PKX). It opened in September 2019 in the south of Beijing and started with four runways and is expected to be equipped with up to eight runways for civil aviation. Nevertheless, the two hub airports taken as a whole and treated as a whole in this case study will have ample capacity reserves for future growth of passenger and flight volume in the Beijing region. As in the preceding sections, we present results for 2030 and 2040 regarding passenger volume, number of aircraft movements, aircraft size and capacity gain. The purpose is to demonstrate the forecast capability of the models of Part II of the book on the airport level for the example airports. We have included an additional optimistic scenario with a third runway in LHR as proposed by the Airports Commission (2015) to solve the capacity crunch. In this case the maximum number of aircraft movements that LHR can handle per year could increase by about 260,000 to around 740,000 aircraft movements, as already discussed in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints (Airports Commission, 2015). This value is close to our own estimate of the airport capacity model of Chapter 7, Modelling future airport capacity and capacity utilisation, which forecasts a 50% increase of airport capacity given the runway configuration, which means to almost 785,000 aircraft movements per year. But, for the analyses to follow, we keep the value of 740,000 aircraft movements per year of the Airports Commission (2015), which has assumed that the new runway will be fully available no later than 2030 so that there is no demand lost because of a capacity shortage at LHR (see Chapter 8: Modelling future airport capacity enlargements and limits and especially Fig. 8.3 for more details on demand accumulation). Nevertheless, we still expect the status quo to remain at LHR, which means the current runway system to be the more likely case for the years 2030 and 2040. However, we assume that the movement cap will be dropped so that the airport can handle about 523,000 aircraft movements annually, which is a capacity increase of almost 10%. Eventually, we have to take note of the fact that capacity realisation forecasts, especially at LHR,
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are inherently difficult. For SAN we do not expect an enlargement of runway capacity, as it is sufficient to handle the forecast traffic volumes of 2030 and 2040.
10.6.1 Passenger volume
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Fig. 10.23 shows the annual passenger volume of 2016 and the forecast years 2030 and 2040 for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX, and SAN. The annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 are displayed on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040, respectively. About 76 million passengers were handled at LHR in 2016, while around 117 and 144 million passengers per year are forecast for 2030 and 2040, respectively, in the case of two runways. This corresponds to a CAGR of 3.1% for the time period 2016 30 and 2.1% for 2030 40. Overall, passenger volume rises by almost 90% between 2016 and 2040, which is quite amazing given the current capacity situation at LHR. However, the prevailing decreasing growth rate of passenger volume essentially arises from an ever-expanding capacity shortage at LHR, while the demand drivers are more or less stable (see Section 10.2). In the case of an additional runway, passenger volume at LHR could even rise to more than 126 million and 168 million passengers in 2030 and 2040, respectively. This corresponds to a 350
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FIGURE 10.23 Actual and forecast annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 (values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40). CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
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CAGR of 3.7% for the time period 2016 30 and 2.9% for 2030 40. In total, passenger volume could even increase by 121% between 2016 and 2040, if a third runway were available at LHR. More than 96 million passengers arrived at or departed from PEK in 2016 and for 2030 and 2040, 202 million and 290 million passengers, respectively, are expected to be handled at the two hub airports of Beijing PEK and PKX. This corresponds to a CAGR of 5.4% for the time period 2016 30 and 3.7% for 2030 40 and, thus, passenger volume will triple between 2016 and 2040. The growth rate slows down substantially over time, because economic development in China is expected to slow down as well in the long term (see Section 10.2). However, growth rates of passenger volume as well as economic development are still significantly higher than in more mature economies such as Europe or North America. Direct capacity constraints play no role because of the new airport PKX; however, there is some unaccommodated demand volume as a result of indirect capacity constraints. Twenty-one million passengers were handled at the single-runway airport SAN in 2016, and passenger volume is forecast to increase to almost 34 million and more than 44 million passengers in 2030 and 2040, respectively. This corresponds to a CAGR of 3.5% for the time period 2016 30 and 2.8% for 2030 40, and passenger volume therefore grows by about 112% between 2016 and 2040. There is no significant capacity shortage expected until 2040 because of a trend to larger aircraft that means more passengers per flight. However, further economic development mirrors that of a mature economy, which limits further growth potential of passenger volume. Fig. 10.24 displays the forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for 2030 and 2040 by airport. The share of unaccommodated passenger volume, which is related to the unconstrained passenger volume, is displayed on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040. In the case that the current runway system will not be extended, about 8.6 million passengers, corresponding to 6.8% of the forecast unconstrained passenger volume of London Heathrow (LHR), cannot be served in 2030 due to a capacity shortage. For 2040 this value increases to nearly 25.2 million passengers, equalling almost 15% of the unconstrained passenger demand volume of LHR. However, if a third runway were to be realised, unaccommodated passenger volume could be reduced to about 340,000 in 2030 and 2.4 million passengers in 2040, which is 0.3% and 1.4% of the unconstrained passenger volume forecast. Any unaccommodated demand is due to capacity constraints at other airports, as there would be sufficient capacity at LHR up to 2040. However, LHR will be almost at its capacity limit of 740,000 aircraft movements per year in 2040. Unaccommodated passenger demand at PEK and PKX and SAN is rather small and caused by indirect capacity constraints. Due to the new airport, Beijing Daxing (PKX), there is a massive capacity increase for the Beijing
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FIGURE 10.24 Forecast unaccommodated annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2030 and 2040 (values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent the share of unaccommodated demand relative to the unconstrained demand, that means forecast passenger volume plus unaccommodated demand).
region and, thus, just between 633,000 (0.3%) and 1.7 million (0.6%) passengers of the unconstrained passenger volume cannot be served, but mainly because of capacity constraints at other Asian airports. SAN has ample capacity reserves in 2016 but will reach its capacity limit in 2040. Around 189,000 passengers (0.6%) in 2030 and 736,000 passengers (1.6%) in 2040 cannot be handled because of a capacity shortage at destination airports. While the level of unaccommodated demand is relatively low at these three airports, capacity constraints are becoming increasingly important, as the trend of the share of unaccommodated demand illustrates: it doubles for the Beijing airports and almost triples for SAN.
10.6.2 Number of aircraft movements Fig. 10.25 displays the forecast number of aircraft movements for 2030 and 2040 for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX, and SAN. The annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 are shown on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040, respectively. In the most likely case, which is the do-nothing scenario for LHR, traffic volume increases only by 0.7% p.a. until 2030. Thereafter the number of aircraft movements remains constant and reaches a level of about 523,000. However, in the optimistic
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FIGURE 10.25 Actual and forecast number of annual aircraft movements for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 [values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40]. CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
case, which means a third runway, the number of aircraft movements is forecast to rise to more than 610,000 in 2030 and almost 725,000 in 2040, which is close to the capacity limit. CAGR of flights is 1.8% for the time period 2016 30 and 1.7% between 2030 and 2040 and, thus, substantially higher due to ample capacity reserves. On the other hand, PEK and PKX, and SAN are examples of airports that do not suffer from direct capacity constraints as there is sufficient capacity available. As a result, the number of aircraft movements grows much faster than at LHR in the case of two runways, especially at PEK and PKX, because of the strong growth of passenger demand volume. For 2030 almost 927,000 aircraft movements are expected at the two Beijing hub airports, and this value is forecast to increase to almost 1.2 million in 2040. This corresponds to a CAGR of 3.1% for 2016 30 and 2.4% for 2030 40. Between 2016 and 2040, the number of aircraft movements will rise by 94%. Because of a more mature market, it is expected to grow much slower at SAN. For 2030 about 218,000 aircraft movements are forecast, which corresponds to a CAGR of 1.7%. The number of aircraft movements is expected to reach a level of almost 254,000, which corresponds to a CAGR of 1.5% between 2030 and 2040. Thus we expect SAN to reach its capacity limit around the year 2040, which is about 260,000 aircraft movements.
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10.6.3 Aircraft size Fig. 10.26 presents the average aircraft size for 2016 and the forecast years 2030 and 2040 for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX, and SAN. The annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 are displayed on top of the columns for 2030 and 2040, respectively. Average aircraft size is expected to increase substantially at all three airports. However, the strongest increase, both in absolute as well as in relative terms, can be found at LHR in the case of no further runway extension. The number of passengers per flight is on average 160 in 2016 and is forecast to increase to 224 in 2030 and 275 in 2040. This corresponds to an annual increase of 2.4% for the period 2016 30 and 2.1% for 2030 40. Thus despite an increasing capacity shortage, growth of passengers per flight slows down slightly, as there are limits to increasing average aircraft size, in particular at hub airports. In the case of a third runway, aircraft size still increases considerably at LHR. In 2030 average aircraft size is forecast to be 207 and 232 in 2040. This equals a CAGR of 1.9% for 2016 30 and 1.1% for 2030 40. Because of the eased capacity situation, the number of passengers per flight is, in 2030, 17 and, in 2040, 43 less than in the case of two runways. Due to capacity constraints at destination airports, average aircraft size increases at PEK and PKX, and SAN considerably as well, however, much
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FIGURE 10.26 Actual and forecast average aircraft size, that means passengers per flight, for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the years 2016, 2030 and 2040 [values above the columns for 2030 and 2040 represent annual growth rates (CAGR) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40]. CAGR, Compound annual growth rate.
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less than at LHR. Furthermore, the strong growth of passenger volume that is expected for 2030 and 2040 at PEK and PKX supports increasing aircraft size. At PEK and PKX, average aircraft size increases from 159 in 2016 to 218 (12.3% p.a. between 2016 and 2030) in 2030 and finally to 246 (11.2% p.a. between 2030 and 2040) in 2040. Average aircraft size increases at SAN from 121 passengers per flight in 2016 to 155 in 2030 and 175 in 2040. This corresponds to a CAGR of 1.8% for 2016 30 and 1.3% for 2030 40.
10.6.4 Capacity analyses
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Capacity gain by larger aircraft in annual passenger volume
Figs 10.27 and 10.28 display the capacity gain by larger aircraft and by runway measures, respectively, for the airports LHR, PEK and PKX and SAN for the periods 2016 30 and 2030 40. As explained earlier, the capacity gain is measured in annual passenger volume to account for aircraft size development. The values on the top of the columns describe the measure-specific relative increase of passenger volume compared to the base year of the forecast, which means 2016 for the first period and 2030 for the second period. In the case of a do-nothing scenario, passenger volume at LHR will increase by 42% due to larger aircraft and by 12% through better runway utilisation between 2016 and 2030. Overall, passenger volume will increase by about 54% during that period. Thus around 78% of the necessary capacity 60 56.1%
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FIGURE 10.27 Capacity gain by employing larger aircraft, that means more passengers per flight, measured in annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the time periods 2016 to 2030 and 2030 to 2040 (values above the columns for 2016 30 and 2030 40 represent the relative capacity gain during that period).
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FIGURE 10.28 Capacity gain by improving runway utilisation and runway enlargements measured in annual passenger volume for London Heathrow (LHR) with two and three runways, Beijing Capital City (PEK) and Beijing Daxing (PKX), and San Diego (SAN) for the time periods 2016 30 and 2030 40 (values above the columns for 2016 30 and 2030 40 represent the relative capacity gain during that period).
will be provided by increasing aircraft size and only 22% of the necessary capacity comes from better runway utilisation so that more traffic can be handled by the airport. For the period 2030 40, only further increasing aircraft size will contribute to capacity gains at LHR to accommodate the rise of passenger volume of 23% compared to 2030. As a result, the increase of total annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2040 at LHR of almost 68 million passengers is made up of 59 million passengers (87%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and 9 million passengers (13%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation. This is no surprise given the tight capacity situation at LHR and things would be very different in the case of a third runway. In this case, passenger volume would rise by 35% due to larger aircraft and by 31% through better runway utilisation and enlargements between 2016 and 2030, which is more balanced because of ample capacity reserves. For 2030 40 passenger volume is expected to increase by 18% due to larger aircraft and by 15% through better runway utilisation, which is roughly a fifty-fifty ratio. Due to the large capacity increase, total passenger volume is forecast to increase by about 91.3 million (1121%) between 2016 and 2040, which is made up of 48.6 million (53%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and 42.7 million (47%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation and enlargements. The airports PEK and PKX are a different case, because the new hub airport PKX means a massive capacity expansion in the Beijing region. Thus
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passenger volume will increase by 56% due to larger aircraft and by 53% through better runway utilisation and enlargements between 2016 and 2030. This is a more balanced ratio compared to LHR with two runways, and whereas there is sufficient airport capacity in the Beijing region, there are major capacity bottlenecks at other major Asian airports (see Tables 10.7 and 10.13). In total, passenger volume will rise by almost 110% between 2016 and 2030, and each measure provides about half of the necessary capacity. For the 2030 40 period, better runway utilisation becomes more important relative to increasing aircraft size, because aircraft size is already very large and unlike LHR (two runways), there are still ample capacity reserves. Nevertheless, aircraft size continues to increase between 2030 and 2040 substantially. The total increase of annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2040 at PEK and PKX of more than 193 million passengers is made up of more than 86 million (45%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and nearly 107 million (55%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation and enlargements. This is a more balanced ratio compared to the most likely LHR case. Finally, passenger volume at SAN will increase by 36% due to larger aircraft and by 26% through better runway utilisation between 2016 and 2030. Therefore passenger volume will increase by 61% during that period, and about 58% of the necessary capacity will be provided by increasing aircraft size. On the other hand, 42% of the necessary capacity comes from better runway utilisation, as there are considerable capacity reserves at SAN. For the years 2030 40, as at PEK and PKX, better runway utilisation and increasing aircraft size each contribute about 50% to the necessary capacity gain, because aircraft size is already relatively large for a North American airport, and there are still sufficient capacity reserves up to around the year 2040. However, aircraft size is still expected to rise between 2030 and 2040, and the increase totals more than 50 passengers per flight between 2016 and 2040. The overall increase of annual passenger volume between 2016 and 2040 at SAN of 23.5 million passengers is made up of almost 12.8 million (54%) capacity gain by larger aircraft and nearly 10.7 million (46%) capacity gain by better runway utilisation. Thus while SAN and PEK and PKX differ clearly in terms of passenger and flight volume as well as average aircraft size, they are quite similar regarding the composition of mitigation measures.
10.7 Conclusion In this chapter, we presented the main results of the global, regional and airport-specific passenger and flight volume forecast. Future growth of traffic volumes and limiting factors of growth were discussed in the context of measures applied to mitigating existing or forecast airport capacity shortages. As a consequence, some general mitigation strategies have been derived for
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airports of different types regarding their traffic volume and average aircraft size, which means passengers per flight. As was to be expected, our forecast yields a continuation of the longterm growth of air passenger demand and flight volume until 2040, however, with growth varying strongly between world regions. The pace of growth depends on development assumptions of model input variables such as, in particular, socio-economic factors and model design variables such as technological innovations, airport capacity enlargements and growth of aircraft size and utilisation. A key input is the economic development; here, it has been assumed that the real GDP per capita will globally rise by 2.36% p.a. on average between 2016 and 2040. The model’s inherent assumptions of capacity enlargements and aircraft size directly influence forecast results and are seen as the main characteristics of mitigation strategies. Air traffic is forecast to grow substantially until 2040 despite the growing capacity shortage, especially at major airports. Passenger volume is expected to rise from about four billion in 2016 to 9.4 billion passengers in 2040. Depending on the demand growth, the number of flights is forecast to increase from 35.5 million in 2016 to 52.7 million in 2040. Finally, the number of passengers per flight is forecast to rise from an average of 111 in 2016 to 179 passengers in 2040. We have subdivided the forecast into the subperiods 2016 30 and 2030 40 to highlight the effects of capacity constraints at airports on air traffic development. While there is only a marginal unaccommodated passenger volume in 2030 of 49 million on the global level (but not for particular airports), and a lack of airport capacity can still be offset by further increasing aircraft size, there is a substantial shortage in 2040. Almost 256 million passengers cannot be served due to capacity constraints, equalling 2.6% of the global unconstrained demand volume, and more importantly, when relating the value of 2040 to the 2030 value, this share is expected to rise fast beyond 2040. The airports with the largest unaccommodated passenger volume are located in Asia, North America and Europe including Delhi Indira Gandhi (DEL), Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson (ATL) and London Heathrow (LHR). For these airports, the share of unaccommodated passenger volume reaches levels of 15% 25% of their unconstrained passenger volume. Furthermore, we have analysed how much increasing aircraft size as well as better runway utilisation and enlargements contribute to the capacity needed to handle the forecast passenger volume in 2030 and 2040. On the global level, larger aircraft account for 3.1 billion additional passengers and better runway utilisation and enlargements account for 2.3 billion additional passengers. Thus about 57% of the passenger volume growth between 2016 and 2040 is enabled by more passengers per flight and 43% by runwayrelated measures. For heavily capacity constrained airports, increasing aircraft size is even more important, while airports with ample capacity reserves show a more balanced distribution.
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Increasing aircraft size and runway capacity by adding new runways and raising runway utilisation turned out to be the most powerful measures of all options available to airport planners and operators. Theoretically, a whole range of technological, investment and operational options for mitigating a capacity shortage at airports does exist, which have been discussed in Chapter 5, General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints. Some of these measures have been successfully applied, especially increasing aircraft size and, whenever possible, adding runway capacity, while others have turned out to be rather undesirable measures, such as rerouting flights from congested airports, in particular hubs, to secondary airports, and others are still discussed. However, these have not been proven as effective mitigation measures, such as market-based options, in particular peak hour pricing of flights and slot auctions in slot coordination. Based on these findings, we have derived general mitigation strategies. We have subdivided airports according to their average aircraft size and traffic volume into four classes. Depending on their values, we recommend focusing on increasing aircraft size, improving runway utilisation and enlargements or both. We have also conducted such analyses on the global level for the seven world regions and particular airports in those regions. Between 2016 and 2040, more and more airports fall into the category with a large traffic volume as well as large average aircraft size, making further capacity gains difficult. These airports account for 29% of the traffic volume in 2016 and 55% in 2040. On the other hand, airports with a relatively low traffic volume and aircraft size have a share of 31% in 2016, thus being the largest class, but only 10% in 2040, dropping back to third place. As a result, mitigation measures that we have found to be unfavourable until 2040 in this book (see Chapter 5: General strategies for mitigating airport capacity constraints) probably need to be reconsidered beyond 2040 despite their drawbacks, especially shifting traffic to neighbouring airports. The forecasts for 2030 and 2040 demonstrate that increasing aircraft size and airport capacity will have limits in future. This is especially true for Asian airports because of the forecast strong demand growth of that region and the already substantial level of passenger and traffic volume. The case study shows the distinct effect of a substantial increase of airport capacity on future air traffic development by means of the new airport in Beijing, which opened late in 2019, and the third runway at London Heathrow, which may still have an uncertain future because of public resistance, although the British government has endorsed the project. Mitigation measures of airports coping with capacity shortfalls differ between and within world regions, since the share of constrained airports as well as the distribution and future development of traffic volumes and average aircraft size vary substantially. Africa has a relatively high number of small-volume airports with a wide range of average aircraft size, which in most cases do not have major capacity problems. Options to react to future
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capacity constraints would be, first, new runways and for airports with rather small aircraft to increase the seat capacity of flights. Asia has, in contrast, a high share of airports with high traffic volumes as well as aircraft with high seat capacity. In addition, almost half of the 50 top-ranking airports with the highest capacity utilisation in 2016 are located in Asia. Given the strong passenger demand growth forecast for Asia, a general mitigation strategy does not exist. For airports with more runways in operation, and correspondingly large traffic volumes, we would recommend additional airports and, as an intermediate measure, a further increase of average aircraft size. We know, however, that both types of measures may no longer be feasible in the long-term future due to local constraints and non-availability of suitable aircraft types. Future traffic in Europe will be distributed over airports with a wide range of traffic volumes with rather high seat capacity. Most major airports do not yet have complex runway systems; therefore for those with further capacity needs, we would recommend adding new runways. Public opposition to capacity enlargements, however, has been strong in Europe. Hence, improving runway utilisation by further increasing average aircraft size may be the only feasible mitigation strategy for such airports for a longer period of time. More than other world regions, North America has many airports with high runway capacity and large traffic volumes. In 2040 almost threequarters of all flights will be handled by high-volume airports, of which, in 2016, around 13 airports already had high utilisation rates. On the other hand, traffic growth in North America will be relatively low and average aircraft size is the smallest of all world regions. A clear recommendation for the capacity constrained airports among them is therefore to increase average aircraft size. Most of the traffic in the three remaining world regions, the Middle East, South America and the Southwest Pacific, is handled by airports with smaller traffic volumes than in the major regions of Asia, Europe and North America and with an average aircraft size that varies greatly among airports. Two of the three biggest airports, Dubai (DXB) and Mexico City (MEX) will need and probably get new runway capacity. For other airports with a lack of capacity, we would recommend additional runways as well; however, improving runway utilisation remains a good choice, too.
References Airports Commission, 2015. Airports Commission: Final Report, July 2015. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), 2017. ICAO Traffic Statistics. Montreal. Information Handling Services (IHS) Markit, 2017. Global Economy: Forecast of GDP per Capita and Population Growth Rates (CAGR) 2016 to 2030 and 2030 to 2040. IHS Markit, London. Sabre AirVision Market Intelligence (MI), 2016. Data Based on Market Information Data Tapes (MIDT). Sabre, Southlake.