How do you balance competing airport goals?

1 Understand your stakeholders

Your airport serves a diverse range of stakeholders, such as airlines, passengers, regulators, employees, local communities, and environmental groups. Each of these groups has different expectations, needs, and interests, and may not always align with each other or with your airport's vision and mission. To balance competing airport goals, you need to understand your stakeholders, communicate with them effectively, and manage their expectations. You also need to identify and prioritize the most critical issues and opportunities for each stakeholder group, and align them with your airport's strategic objectives and values.

2 Optimize your resources

Your airport has limited resources, such as land, infrastructure, equipment, staff, and capital. To balance competing airport goals, you need to optimize your resource allocation and utilization, and ensure that you are getting the best value for your investment. You also need to monitor your performance and outcomes, and adjust your plans and actions accordingly. You can use various tools and methods to optimize your resources, such as data analysis, benchmarking, forecasting, budgeting, and project management. You can also leverage external resources, such as partnerships, grants, and innovation, to enhance your capabilities and opportunities.

3 Implement best practices

Your airport operates in a dynamic and competitive environment, where standards, regulations, technologies, and customer preferences change constantly. To balance competing airport goals, you need to implement best practices that ensure your airport's safety, efficiency, quality, and sustainability. You also need to keep up with the latest trends and developments in the industry, and adopt innovative and flexible solutions that meet your airport's current and future needs. You can learn from other airports, industry associations, research institutions, and experts, and share your knowledge and experience with them.

4 Balance short-term and long-term goals

Your airport has both short-term and long-term goals, such as increasing passenger traffic, reducing costs, expanding capacity, improving customer service, and reducing environmental impact. To balance competing airport goals, you need to balance your short-term and long-term goals, and ensure that they are consistent and coherent. You also need to balance your risks and rewards, and weigh the trade-offs and synergies between different goals. You can use various tools and frameworks to balance your short-term and long-term goals, such as balanced scorecard, SWOT analysis, scenario planning, and stakeholder analysis.

5 Engage your team

Your airport's success depends largely on your team's performance, motivation, and engagement. To balance competing airport goals, you need to engage your team, and ensure that they are aligned with your airport's vision and mission. You also need to empower your team, and provide them with the skills, tools, and support they need to achieve their goals. You can use various strategies to engage your team, such as setting clear and realistic goals, providing feedback and recognition, fostering collaboration and innovation, and creating a positive and inclusive culture.

6 Review and revise your goals

Your airport's goals are not static, but dynamic and evolving. To balance competing airport goals, you need to review and revise your goals regularly, and ensure that they are relevant and realistic. You also need to evaluate your progress and performance, and identify your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and successes and failures. You can use various tools and techniques to review and revise your goals, such as surveys, audits, reports, dashboards, and meetings.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?