Development and planning of sustainable airports

Air transport is considered an important part of the transportation infrastructure and it has a great impact on urbanisation as well as long‐term economic growth. Airports significantly add to local economy and facilitate a country's integration into the global economy and also provide social benefits to the society. However, together with the socioeconomic benefits, airports adversely affect to the surrounding environments, ecology and society. Some of the main concern, that is, emission from aircraft, noise while take‐off and landing of aircraft, land use, waste disposal and energy consumption, are raised with respect to airport's functioning which requires the attention of the regulatory authorities. The authorities to find the balance approach for the development of airports and to minimise the unfavourable consequences. Therefore, the efforts to be made to develop the “sustainable airports”. “Sustainable development” practises in the airports, improves the social, financial and operational benefits of the airport and also lessen the negative impacts on the environment. After understanding the concept of “Sustainability”, next challenge is to make airport sustainable. The main objective of the article is to find, how to make airport sustainable, when it is called that the airport is a “sustainable airport”. After reviewing the relevant literatures, it may be concluded that “sustainable airports” can be developed by incorporating the sustainability concept in to the airport planning and then taking care of the airport sustainability issues and barriers and airport sustainability components, that is, policy making, commerce, social responsibility, environmental and service quality.