Infrastructure
The expansion of low-cost airlines and secondary airports has significant implications for public and private investors in airports. At the most basic level, the lesson is that the air transport industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift, and that previous assumptions and conventional wisdom should be questioned. The increasingly important role of low-cost airlines is reshaping not only the airline industry, but concepts about the appropriate investments in airport infrastructure. What experience has taught us over the past 30 years may no longer fully apply. Political and business leaders concerned with airport planning and development need to think carefully and cautiously about future investments. Good airport planning, design and management is not what it used to be. Conversely, leaders should anticipate the possibility that low-cost carriers and others will stimulate the demand for distributed airport infrastructure consisting of many smaller airports in contrast to one or more national facilities. Investments in smaller airports that have not yet fully