Create

Fig.17. Artist’s impression of VTOL aircraft
that can provide door to door travel
64
concrete runways and a circular airport may
not prove to be cost effective. An analysis of
the trade-offs between losses generated by
adverse wind conditions and the cost of these
capital intensive facilities would be needed.
On landing one concept was for aircraft to
taxi off the end of the designated landing
runway onto a rotating inner holding ring
which would have arranged inside it a
number of gates for aircraft reception. This
would reduce the amount of taxiing and
deliver the aircraft to the appointed gate in a
sequence. At the gate the passengers would
assemble and be boarded to their aircraft
which would then join the rotating inner
ring and be circulated to the exit point for
the designated take-off runway. The whole
concept could perhaps be understood in terms
of a processing machine designed to keep the
inputs and outputs at a high but reasonably
balanced level. The “work-in-progress” of this
machine, i.e. the passenger numbers would
be kept to a lower level than conventional
airports by the dynamic design of the machinelike
system.
In discussion a number of considerable
challenges were identified, in particular the
space requirements for the system which
would be very large.
An alternative could be the revolving
terminal. Aircraft would vacate the runway
and be placed in a box like structure that is
directly connected to the terminal building.
The terminal would turn slowly and the
box would be back at the runway in about
half an hour. During that time the plane
should be serviced, passengers should have
deplaned and new passengers should be
taken on board. The concept needs further
development especially since the runways
would need to be twice as long as standard
runways and no delays could be accepted. If
the aircraft was unable to depart it would
need to wait for another half an hour before
the box is at the runway again.
Other ideas included the use of advanced
VTOL/STOL airliners that would use VTOL/
STOL airports which could be located near
city centres and hovering airports that would
avoid much of the ground noise experienced
with current airports.
The group discussed the development of
airports in general and one of the ideas
voiced was to avoid HUB airports and rely on
integrated regional airports.
Others had the suggestion to modify airports
so that only the aerodrome function would