OPINION
Airport World
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Airport World editor, Joe Bates, looks forward to the upcoming Airport Cities World Conference in Ekurhuleni and the ACI Asia- Pacific Regional Conference & Exhibition in Phuket.
Although the term‘ airport city’ is relatively new, I have personally considered airports to be mini-cities in their own right ever since I began working at one 30 years ago.
This could be due to the fact that in my first weeks as a trainee journalist at Heathrow I attended a meeting with 4,000 cabin crew; got introduced to the airport’ s chaplain( the Rev Harry Burlton); got drunk at the Control Tower Bar; met Kim Basinger and visited the morgue; well, at least the dedicated place set aside to store bodies in the event of a disaster!
Later liaisons with Heathrow’ s emergency services( I once went out on a training exercise with a team of fire fighters that involved racing around the old Perry Oaks Sludge Works in a dinghy just in case an aircraft crashed landed into it) and countless visits to airline offices, hotels, pubs, sports grounds and, of course, the dedicated press room, only served to reinforce my conviction that Heathrow is indeed a city.
Crikey, it even had its own bylaws, newspaper, Skyport( at which I spent four happy years) and its own annual beauty pageants – Mr and Miss Heathrow Airport!
For these reasons, I had no trouble accepting the airport city concept when it was first mooted or the idea of the‘ aerotropolis’ – new urban areas developed around airports. Airports are, after all, huge economic generators for cities, regions and, sometimes, entire nations, so it makes perfect sense to me that businesses / commerce would gravitate towards them.
The word‘ aerotropolis’ was actually coined by Dr John Kasarda, director of the Center for Air Commerce at the University of Carolina’ s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, so it is only fitting that he writes the introduction to the themed‘ airport cities’ section of this issue.
The section also includes features about Malaysia’ s airport city plans and global investment strategy; retail development; the creation of a‘ space coast’ in Florida; and ambitious projects at Belo Horizonte and Warsaw Chopin.
The other big ACI event in April is the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference & Exhibition in Phuket, Thailand, where delegates will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the region’ s gateways and the key role airports play in driving economic development.
I am certainly looking forward to it and leaving Europe’ s wintery weather behind for a few days!
In light of the event, this issue also contains ACI’ s latest medium-term forecast for the Asia-Pacific region, a special report on Asia- Pacific’ s LCCs, and a Project Watch feature on Hong Kong International Airport.
And if that’ s not enough, we also report on ACI’ s 2012 Airport Service Quality( ASQ) Awards – dominated again by Asia-Pacific airports – and learn more about the innovative use of light and sound in airport terminals; Heathrow’ s social media strategy; and the latest global IT trends.
Next up after Ekurhuleni and Phuket is the small matter of the ACI Europe / World Annual Conference & Exhibition in Istanbul. Doesn’ t time fly when you’ re having fun? AW
AIRPORT WORLD / APRIL-MAY 2013
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