Abstract:

The title of trie seminar suggests that strategic planning could be obsolete. I would not blame people in many industries for taking the view that strategic planning is dead. When survival itself is uncertain one simply can't afford to devote resources - particularly management time - to thinking of anything else. However, in the airport business strategic planning is all-important. One can't change direction quickly in the way an airline can and above all one can't get large additions of capital built into an airport quickly. This is more true in some countries than others, but I would say that in the richer democracies it takes a minimum of about 7-8 years to bring major additions to capacity on stream and it can very often take much long.