The airport of the future

We recently ran a story about the Fentress Global Challenge. It is an international student design competition that “beckons participants to envision groundbreaking concepts for the airport of the future.”

Aspirational language aside, this competition focuses on the airport terminal. According to the Challenge website, the terminal “has since its inception held equal importance with quintessential civic buildings: City halls, courthouses, libraries, museums, and theaters.”

While interesting, it doesn’t really stir my emotions on the topic.

But it did get me thinking about what the airport of the future might look like through the lens of pilots and aircraft owners, not to mention airport owners.

More Land

As the saying goes, a mile of road will take you a mile, but a mile of runway will take you anywhere.

So all we need is a runway and we can go anywhere. Right? Yes, technically.

But this thought exercise isn’t about today’s needs, but about every tomorrow that will follow.

And a growing challenge to yesterday’s airports are encroachment and noise complaints, not to mention financial solvency.

So instead of acquiring enough land to build the runways, taxiways, and ground support, what if we also owned enough land to also preserve the arrival and departure corridors?

And while we’re at it, we should also own the land below the traffic pattern.

That’s likely to be a lot of land.

But, if you look at the airports built — out in the middle of nowhere — in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, they are likely no longer in the middle of nowhere.

They’ve been encroached upon and the new neighbors don’t like the noise.

Go figure.

Hindsight being 20/20, it would’ve been wise to buy far more land than was needed to build an airport. It also would’ve been nice if the local governments had protected airports as development started encroaching. But that’s another column.

Alas, that genie is out of the bottle.

Deed Restriction and Development

Instead of buying all the surrounding land and sitting on it, let’s develop it with airport-compatible uses.

In some cases, that may be a simple residential airpark. In other cases, it could be manufacturing or warehousing or golf courses or pickleball courts or retail or pasture land. Or maybe a combination of all the above.

Most importantly, they would provide revenue streams for proper maintenance and promotion of the airport.

And while we are at it, put deed restrictions in place that will make it more difficult to use the land for non-compatible uses in the future.

Control What Can Be Controlled

The alternative, I suppose, is to hope the neighbors don’t complain about the noise. Or rely on the local government to protect the airport, which was there first.

How’s that working out for Santa Monica? Or Torrance? Or scores of other airports?

And as more anti-airport groups find success, more anti-airport groups are likely to be emboldened.

If I own the land, I have far more control than if I don’t.

Yes, it’ll be expensive. And it is far more complicated than outlined in these few hundred words.

But instead of spending energy, time, and money playing defense, we could play with airplanes.

And that sounds like a lot more fun.