Yes, your local government certainly has other concerns in mind when they need to decide whether or not to expand the local airport...For instance, the noise le

Yes, your local government certainly has other concerns in mind when they need to decide whether or not to expand the local airport...For instance, the noise level would go up (from the airplanes as well as the passengers driving to/from the airports), and the natural environment might be affected... Then there are all sorts of complications...I think that's why the parent thread poster (i.e. candiodari ) identifies government as a crucial factor in this A380 ordering issue... Smaller commercial planes would have more advantages in such case, as they are more flexible for any existing airport with existing plane certification... On the other hand, although I have never boarded an A380 so far, I believe it has its own merits in terms of comfort and stability as well as safety and fuel efficiency if the airline could always have it fully booked...But those are not the immediate concerns of the government -- that's a problem when you need to reach consensus on some meta-issue, which could be decomposed into smaller issues where each one of them is determined by different and relatively independent parties, in a parliament-like setting (as in that distributed system model).