And any improvement in Europe's overall economy is likely to increase these pressures. Planning is made more difficult by the constraints of nature. Western Europe is small compared to the United States, and land is at a premium. Also, European airports tend to be close to population centers, adding to the environmental debate over new construction. During that time, we could have gone into another boom and another recession.
Airports are dependent on airlines in more ways than one.
Airport planners must make predictions about the direction of technology. Any future move toward giant planes, he added, would be discouraged by the enormous cost of adjustments on the ground. If planes do get much bigger than those currently planned, he said, they are likely to get longer rather than wider. Robert Payne, a spokesman for Frankfurt Airport, noted that the ability of airports to adjust to demand is affected by their own physical constraints. But you just can't open up airports from one year to the next.