Airport capacity crunch ‘threatening freedom to travel’ – IATA
December 20, 2024
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has issued a stark warning about the growing airport capacity “crunch”, which it says is jeopardising the fundamental freedom to travel and constraining economic growth.
With demand for air travel outpacing the development of airport infrastructure, IATA has called for urgent changes to the way airports manage their capacity.
In a newly published White Paper, IATA highlighted the increasing strain on global airport networks, revealing that nearly 400 airports worldwide are already unable to meet demand fully, necessitating the use of slot coordination under the IATA Worldwide Airport Slot Guidelines. This number could rise by 25% within the next decade if current trends continue.
The challenges posed by the capacity crunch are particularly acute in Europe. Airports Council International (ACI) Europe has projected that airport infrastructure will fall short of meeting up to 12% of demand by 2050. Large-scale developments, such as new runways, are unlikely to materialise due to political constraints, leaving the region vulnerable to declining competitiveness.
The Draghi report has already pointed to significant underperformance in Europe’s competitiveness, a situation likely to worsen unless airports take decisive action to maximise the potential of existing infrastructure.
IATA’s White Paper outlines several proposals aimed at ensuring airports do more to optimize their current capacity. Among its key recommendations are requiring airports to regularly review and update their capacity declarations, supported by transparent and meaningful consultation processes; setting obligations for airports to increase capacity where feasible, using global best practices as benchmarks; and introducing consequences for airports that fail to deliver on declared capacity commitments.
“The only cure for insufficient capacity is construction. But as long as large-scale endeavours such as building new runways or terminals remain politically out-of-reach in many parts of the world, we must squeeze every last unit of capacity out of the infrastructure we have. Some airports set strong benchmarks for maximising capacity, but too many fail to follow the guidance in the Worldwide Airport Slot Guidelines,” said Nick Careen, IATA’s SVP for Operations, Safety and Security.
“Under the slot regulations, airlines are obliged to utilise the slots they are granted efficiently or face penalties for cancelling flights, or not operating to schedule. But airports face no penalties if they don’t deliver promised capacity. They have little pressure to meet global benchmarks on efficiency.
“Moreover, there is often insufficient transparency for the capacity declarations that they do make. This needs a major rebalancing so that airports and airlines are equally obliged to maximise the potential social and economic value of airport capacity.”
