CHAPTER 5

Near-Term Actions and Future Research Needs

The vision and future laid out in the preceding chapters are intentionally ambitious and require action and collaboration on the part of many stakeholders. This chapter provides responses to the question “What can be done today to make that future possible?” These brief responses are presented at a high level; many could merit a full report in their own right (and in many cases, relevant studies have been published). The purpose of this chapter, and indeed this report, is to step back from any single action and provide a cohesive vision that these actions support.

Near-Term Actions

The actions described in this chapter arose during discussions that were part of the participatory futuring workshops described in Appendix A. These near-term actions (defined as actions that could be taken through 2030) are grouped by topic for alignment with the structure of this report. For each action, the authors highlight the relevant stakeholders. However, the authors recognize that the needs and contexts facing airports vary widely, depending on size, airport-airline agreements, passenger types served (domestic versus international, transfer versus originating), amount of cargo handled, ground transportation options, and degree of community and political support. The future of airports also depends on actions undertaken by many other groups, including airlines (passenger and cargo), aircraft manufacturers, a wide array of service providers, the FAA, and state and local governments. Finally, many aspects of aviation are ultimately driven by customer demand.

Operations

Airport Capacity, Digital Operations, and Passenger Journey

• Airports: Increase investment in digital connectivity, monitoring, and processing to enable increased collaboration with stakeholders, to quickly and easily share data.
• Airports: Update facilities to make commercial service airports more accessible to passengers with disabilities, both physical and cognitive.
• Airports: Explore upgrades or changes to baggage delivery systems (Studdiford Technical Solutions et al., 2023).
• TSA and CBP: Continue experiments with process changes and emerging technologies that allow fundamental shifts in security approaches and expand these practices where they are successful.
• Travelers: Utilize apps and other sources of real-time data updates from airports and operators for a smoother travel experience.
• Travelers: Be open-minded about the trade-off between privacy and security.

Air Traffic Control

• FAA and Other Stakeholders: Continue to advance NextGen, as described in existing plans and assessments (for a more detailed discussion of specific steps toward air traffic control modernization, see FAA, 2020 or GAO, 2023a).

Workforce

• Airports: Explore new talent pools for recruitment to bring in more people from outside aviation, including a wider variety of demographic groups.
• Airports: Consider new approaches to training staff, such as apprentice programs, and potentially collaborate with other airports and stakeholders on a nationwide training program.

Sustainability

Emissions

• Department of Energy National Labs (such as the National Renewable Energy Lab): Continue to support fundamental research on environmentally friendly fuel sources, such as SAF and hydrogen, as well as the resilience of the electrical grid (GAO, 2023b).
• Aircraft Manufacturers: Continue to support and collaborate with research on environmentally friendly fuel sources, such as SAF and hydrogen.

Energy Resilience and Electrification

• Airports: Invest in new infrastructure that is energy efficient, environmentally sustainable, and can accommodate the transition to clean energy sources (GAO, 2023b).

Climate Disruptions and Response

• Airports: Develop climate response plans, focusing on adapting to climate change impacts that affect various elements of operations.

Community Relations

• Airports: Reach out to—or even help establish—working groups with the local community as a forum to discuss energy and climate plans, particularly as they involve complex interactions with local communities.

Integration

Multimodal Integration

• Airports: Consider how engagement with multimodal transportation models, including AAM, might impact existing fee structures and create new funding opportunities.
• U.S. DOT: Encourages, or serves as a convening body for, collaboration that supports airports as multimodal hubs, such as strengthening connections between airports, transit systems, and intercity rail.
• State and Local Governments: Advocate for and utilize more flexible approaches to multimodal funding.
• Travelers: Embrace multimodal travel options where available.

Funding and Regulatory Issues

• Airports: Explore creative approaches to P3s where helpful, including financing and operations of airport terminals.

• Airports: Consider how excess parking space might be repurposed toward new uses if parking demand continues to decline.
• FAA: Adopts new regulations around AAM aircraft to ensure safety and allow for commercialization and integration into the aviation ecosystem.
• FAA: Considers ways to revise grant assurance requirements to allow for more flexible use of funding.
• Congress: Passes an authorization bill that allows U.S. DOT to take a more flexible approach to funding multimodal transportation, including setting aside funds to be specifically targeted at connecting transit systems to airports.
• State and Local Governments: Ensure zoning boards communicate and collaborate with local airports, so that development patterns account for noise contours and other externalities.

Future Research Needs

The participatory futuring workshops described in Appendix A also involved the identification of future research needs required to support these actions and the achievement of this vision. Some of these constitute new research, while others involve updates to existing work where circumstances have sufficiently changed as to require updating. The topics are phrased as potential research questions and relevant resources are suggested in parentheses.

Operations

• How might widespread deployment of AVs affect air travel networks? (Roy et al., 2021)
• How can airports embrace and benefit from technology when they are required to be economically self-sustaining? (ACRP, 2023)
• What could be a desirable role of AI in airport/airline operations? Could AI free up resources for higher uses? (ACRP, 2021)
• Some airports want to be catalysts regarding innovation, but how can airports embrace and benefit from technology? (ACRP, 2023)
• How can airports/aviation attract and retain a diverse and skilled workforce, especially bringing in workers from a younger age, and workers with technology skills? What skills (both technical and “soft skills”) are needed? (ACI–NA, 2022a; ACI–NA, 2022b)
• How can the industry better showcase the benefits of working in aviation? (ACI–NA, 2022a; ACI–NA, 2022b)

Sustainability

• How can SAF production be increased, and what quantities are needed to support current and future demand? (U.S. DOE et al., 2022)
• Is hydrogen a viable alternative fuel for aviation? (Le Bris et al., 2022)

Integration

• How can airports offset revenue loss and bring on new funding streams? How might this look different for airports of different sizes, and what is the appropriate federal role in airport funding? (Miller et al., 2020)
• How should regulations around rate-setting be defined (e.g., what is “reasonable”)? (Karanki and Lim, 2022)
• What are best practices to determine accurate and holistic estimates for the cost of running an airport? (ACI–NA, 2024)

• How can airports change the perception and enjoyment of flying? How can the industry increase the allure of flying, while also ensuring it is accessible? (Bogicevic et al., 2013; Wiredja et al., 2019)
• Should there be more outreach to passengers and the general public about both the role of airports as well as how they are funded? What could an effort like this accomplish, and whose responsibility is it to provide such outreach and education? (Long, 2017)
• Does the current network of airports serve travel demand appropriately? Are there needs for consolidation or new airports, and what might the criteria for these decisions be? (Wittman and Swelbar, 2014; Sheard, 2017)

Concluding Thoughts

The primary purpose of this report is not to precisely forecast what the airport of 2050 will look like but rather to help stakeholders reach a shared, and even aspirational, understanding of what the airport of 2050 could look like. Major changes are certainly required to reach the vision presented. Those changes begin with a common vision for what the future of aviation should look like. In doing so, it is important to acknowledge that stakeholders all have different perspectives on how to prioritize the myriad of challenges facing the future of aviation. While this work has sought to broadly capture the challenges collectively highlighted by participants, other stakeholders may distribute attention to these priorities differently (such as more or less focus on climate change) or may wish to consider factors that did not arise as a focus in this particular futuring exercise (such as interactions between airports and space travel). Such challenges are inevitable in developing a vision for the future, and identifying topics that receive differing prioritization across stakeholders can provide valuable perspectives.