The effectiveness of conceptual airport terminal designs

It is forecast that there will be a large growth in air traffic over the next decade or so and to accommodate this will require investment in airport infrastructure including terminals. These buildings represent large, lumpy investments so it is important to provide the capacity to accommodate the forecast traffic. However, this depends on at least two factors; the accuracy of the forecast of future demand and the process of translating these forecasts into designs. Errors in either of these can be financially catastrophic. The latter of these two factors depend on “rules of thumb” formulae that convert design hour flows into area requirements for each terminal facility. This paper will look in detail at the process of translating demand forecasts into conceptual terminal designs. The basic methods that are used will be outlined and how they affect the conceptual terminal design process will be revealed. It will be shown that even if demand forecasts can be taken to be completely accurate, there can still be errors in terminal design and size resulting from the use of these “rules of thumb.”