Travel of the future

With growing populations and consumption rates, air traffic in Europe is expected to grow rapidly towards 2050, particularly as more people outside the continent become increasingly able to travel. However, this growth will be faced with dwindling resources, more expensive fossil fuels and stricter environmental expectations, requiring a strong vision for how the airports of the future will operate. While EU-led projects such as Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) and Clean Sky are already addressing growth expectations up to 2050, there is a need to put in place radical solutions for airport operation beyond this milestone.

With this in mind, 'The 2050+ Airport' (2050AP), a recent EU-funded project, investigated revolutionary solutions to prepare airports for 2050 and beyond. It aimed to enable 90 % of European travellers to complete their intra-European door-to-door journey within 4 hours.

This requires better connectivity between the critical nodes or hubs, a larger network of airports, and better links with other modes of transport. It also calls for a seamless provision of services to upgrade door-to-door travel time, considering as well sustainability and user friendliness. Underlining that future airports must address these objectives, the project team developed three concepts required to bring this vision to fruition.

The first concept centred on a time-efficient airport that maximises the value of time through efficient and effective air transport operations. The second focused on cost effectiveness, proposing an airport with extremely low operating costs and optimal revenues. The third envisioned an ultra-green airport with self-sufficient energy needs. Inherent in the third concept are the ideas of climate neutral operations and low sound pollution.

To achieve its aims, the project team analysed a baseline reference airport and identified all operations, processes and bottlenecks that need to be improved. It then defined the methodology needed to develop the concepts and worked on validating them. The latter involved assessing the value of concept ideas vis-à-vis stakeholder needs and key performance indicators, as well as analytical methods to further refine and quantitatively assess the concepts.

Three workshops were organised to disseminate the project's results and assess its feasibility. When the future comes, European airports will be ready for it.