Moves to avoid terminal woes of air rush

China's soaring air transport industry may have high environmental and social cost

Airports are playing a major role in national and regional development in China by providing accessibility within the country and connecting it to the rest of the world, and in so doing supporting trade, tourism, and social and economic integration.

Traffic forecasts indicate rapid growth in demand for air travel for the foreseeable future. Meeting this demand will bring significant benefits to millions of people. However, it will not be achieved without environmental and social cost.

Air transport growth is outstripping technological improvement, with the result that some environmental impacts associated with the operation of airports and airlines are growing - a trend that is unsustainable in the longer term.

The Chinese government is committed to the concept of sustainable development, and in this context aviation has implications at national, regional and local levels in terms of the maintenance of sustainable economic growth, social progress and effective protection of the environment.

The current rapid growth of air transport across China is taking place not only within the context of tightening environmental constraints, but also changing social attitudes, and this creates additional challenges. For example, around the world, the disturbance caused by aircraft noise has given rise to severe operational constraints at airports - night closures, failure to gain planning approval for further infrastructure growth, such as the construction of new runways - and has even contributed to city center airports being closed.

The rapid rate of air traffic growth in some parts of China risks exposing more people to aircraft noise disturbance. But the problem is made worse because perceived disturbance is a subjective issue related to expected quality of life, so economic growth across China will mean levels of disturbance that were "acceptable" in the past will no longer be considered so in the future. This could lead to increasing opposition to airport growth and thereby restrict the ability of airports to contribute to regional economic development.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than at London's Heathrow Airport where noise disturbance has resulted in plans to develop a third runway being suspended.

But noise is not the only problem. Other environmental issues, such as poor air quality resulting from aircraft and road traffic to and from the airport, or energy and water demand by those airports, can also act as limits to growth, and this has given rise to the concept of "airport environmental capacity".

Aviation can have a major impact on the development of second and third-tier cities and the regions they serve across China. Experience suggests, however, that if airports are to support economic and social development over the long term, they need to anticipate the environmental consequences and resource requirements of future growth, so that they are not constrained by public opposition, environmental legislation or by an inability to secure enough energy and water to meet customer service requirements. This requires careful strategic planning in terms of land use, the location and design of new airport infrastructure and the way in which they are managed.

Meanwhile at a global level, airlines face other environmental challenges associated with their rapid development, such as growing fuel consumption, in the context of climate change and reducing carbon emissions.

With all of these issues in mind, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, working with Chinese academic institutions, has established links with experts in other parts of the world to support research and knowledge transfer in these fields.

In 2008, the Centre for Aviation, Transport and the Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK signed a memorandum of understanding with aviation specialists and designers Arup and the Civil Aviation University of China in Beijing to promote research and knowledge transfer that supports the sustainable development of the air transport industries in the UK and China.

CATE worked with Arup on the development of Kunming Airport, which is now used as a benchmark across China for green airport design. A director of CATE has been appointed adjunct professor at the University of Tianjin, focusing on aircraft noise, and the center has worked with Tsinghua University on the development of biofuels for airlines.

The author is the chair of Sustainable Aviation Centre for Aviation, Transport and the Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University.

(China Daily European Weekly 01/10/2014 page9)