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The scalability of airports is really only an issue at a select few airports, though. JFK and LHR are the big ones that come to mind. FRA and ORD are pretty con

The scalability of airports is really only an issue at a select few airports, though. JFK and LHR are the big ones that come to mind. FRA and ORD are pretty congested as well. SFO might become extremely congested in the future as they don't have much room to expand. However, that's still only <10 airports in a world of thousands. Pretty much every major Asian airport (with the exception of Haneda) has tons of room to expand, and most are already doing so. Congestion is hardly an issue there. Even in the US, there are still airports with plenty of unused capacity: DFW, Denver, Dulles, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Detroit, etc have plenty of room to build new terminals and runways as needed. Even LAX and ATL are still sitting on plenty of land awaiting terminal expansion. And the same can be said for much of the small-medium sized airports in the US as well. The A380 is important to JFK and LHR slots, but I think it's much more likely that we see a the growth of alternate airports and more point-to-point travel than it is that the entire industry will make an about-face regarding the A380 just for the sake of a handful of airports.

saryant 9y ago
Denver's airport was built with ATL scale in mind. It's already the largest airport in the US by land size, nearly twice as large as the next airport on the list, which gives them tons of room to expand without needing to buy up neighboring plots. The airport already has six runways and the master plan calls for six more. Two of the three existing concourses can be lengthened to add more gates and the plan allows for four more concourses without needing to reconfigure runways. Last year the city approved a plan for 39 new gates. (In case you've ever wondered why taxiing at DEN takes forever, this is why)
- txcwpalpha 9y ago
  Aye. It's a similar situation for DFW. The original master plan called for thirteen terminals (see pic [1]), not including the additional cargo terminals/ramps. It currently has 5, and although it will probably never expand to 13, there is enough land space for plenty of expansion. 1: https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppson-copy.jpg https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppso...
mpweiher 9y ago
But the points that people want to fly to are those busy airports. New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations. And traffic growth to those destinations is huge. Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested.
- txcwpalpha 9y ago
  That's not necessarily true. NYC and London serve as huge hubs. 22% of JFK's traffic in 2016 was connecting passengers, aka passengers that did not start nor end their trip in NYC [1]. That's 22% of traffic that you can free up by adding more point-to-point flights and bypassing JFK entirely. ~35% of LHR's traffic was connecting passengers [2]. If you live in a small/midsize city in the eastern US and want to go to Europe, chances are you'll be taking a small 737 flight to JFK before connecting onto your flight to LHR and then connecting on your flight to your final destination. However, the industry is moving towards more direct flights (see: Delta just added a direct flight from Orlando to Amsterdam). These flights will reduce the congestion of JFK and LHR considerably. > Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested. Airspace is congested around specific airports, but the same situation applies: there are other airports with almost zero airspace congestion that can easily pick up the slack. If you're talking about jetstreams, we're almost nowhere near saturating the available airspace over the Atlantic. 1: https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-passengers-terminating-at-heathrow-airport-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-...
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    Not sure how you can write “that’s not necessarily true” when your numbers confirm what I wrote: the vast majority of the traffic goes to the “hubs”, the connecting traffic is in the minority. So when total traffic doubles, that’ll be a 160% increase to JFK even if you remove all the “hub” traffic, which is unlikely, and you assume the increase will be evenly distributed, also unlikely. UPDATE: I don't see how the "direct to smaller airports" is anything but a temporary reprieve that will be overwhelmed by the overall trends: concentration of population in ever larger cities and increasing travel.

saryant 9y ago

Denver's airport was built with ATL scale in mind. It's already the largest airport in the US by land size, nearly twice as large as the next airport on the list, which gives them tons of room to expand without needing to buy up neighboring plots. The airport already has six runways and the master plan calls for six more. Two of the three existing concourses can be lengthened to add more gates and the plan allows for four more concourses without needing to reconfigure runways. Last year the city approved a plan for 39 new gates. (In case you've ever wondered why taxiing at DEN takes forever, this is why)

txcwpalpha 9y ago
Aye. It's a similar situation for DFW. The original master plan called for thirteen terminals (see pic [1]), not including the additional cargo terminals/ramps. It currently has 5, and although it will probably never expand to 13, there is enough land space for plenty of expansion. 1: https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppson-copy.jpg https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppso...

mpweiher 9y ago

But the points that people want to fly to are those busy airports. New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations. And traffic growth to those destinations is huge. Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested.

txcwpalpha 9y ago
That's not necessarily true. NYC and London serve as huge hubs. 22% of JFK's traffic in 2016 was connecting passengers, aka passengers that did not start nor end their trip in NYC [1]. That's 22% of traffic that you can free up by adding more point-to-point flights and bypassing JFK entirely. ~35% of LHR's traffic was connecting passengers [2]. If you live in a small/midsize city in the eastern US and want to go to Europe, chances are you'll be taking a small 737 flight to JFK before connecting onto your flight to LHR and then connecting on your flight to your final destination. However, the industry is moving towards more direct flights (see: Delta just added a direct flight from Orlando to Amsterdam). These flights will reduce the congestion of JFK and LHR considerably. > Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested. Airspace is congested around specific airports, but the same situation applies: there are other airports with almost zero airspace congestion that can easily pick up the slack. If you're talking about jetstreams, we're almost nowhere near saturating the available airspace over the Atlantic. 1: https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-passengers-terminating-at-heathrow-airport-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-...
- mpweiher 9y ago
  Not sure how you can write “that’s not necessarily true” when your numbers confirm what I wrote: the vast majority of the traffic goes to the “hubs”, the connecting traffic is in the minority. So when total traffic doubles, that’ll be a 160% increase to JFK even if you remove all the “hub” traffic, which is unlikely, and you assume the increase will be evenly distributed, also unlikely. UPDATE: I don't see how the "direct to smaller airports" is anything but a temporary reprieve that will be overwhelmed by the overall trends: concentration of population in ever larger cities and increasing travel.