Urban Renaissance Institute
January 11, 2000

The reasons for a global rethink into how airports should be owned and operated are three-fold:

• an airport is no longer an instrument of social and economic policy.

   

• as a result, the air transport industry is witnessing the evolution of the airport from a subsidized support system for the airline community, to a highly profitable enterprise in it’s own right.

   

• at the same time, the investment required to keep pace with the growth in air transport — estimated by Britain’s Jane’s Information Group to be more than US$120 billion over the next 20 years — can no longer be absorbed by a cash poor public purse.

More to the point, expenditures to facilitate the commercial transport of people and cargo across the country and around the world, never should have been the responsibility of the taxpayer.