Programme

The conference will consist of numerous high-level sessions including cutting edge presentations and panel discussions from industry leaders, top level decision makers and other airport professionals.

Chair: Kata Cserep, Vice President, Airports, ICF
Angela Gittens, Director General, ACI World
Olivier Jankovec, Director General, ACI EUROPE
Patti Chau, Regional Director, ACI Asia-Pacific
Luis Fonseca de Almeida, Regional Director, ICAO

A panel of experts in the airport industry will discuss the following: The future growth of the airport industry means committing today to significant capital plans with long time-horizons. Investors will look for safe assets and stable income streams, but risk levels are increasing in many regions making financing a challenge. Furthermore, airports around the world face a more competitive business market and have to operate as commercial entities. At the same time, the underlying structure of airports’ business models is changing. Next to traditional PPP, the expanding role of global airport groups change how airports operate.

Chair: Charles Schlumberger, Lead Air Transport Specialist, The World Bank
Keith Mason, Professor & Head of Air Transport Management, Cranfield University
Dan Wong, Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Department – Transport Studies, Business and Economics Department, Modern College of Business and Science, Oman
Mathieu Blondel, Partner, Arthur D Little
Jonathan Sandbach, Consultant Economist, Alix Partners
Shyamali Rajivan, Director, Global Infrastructure and Project Finance, Fitch Ratings

PART ONE – THEORY (PANEL DISCUSSION)
Airports need to attract both airlines and passengers. Traditional views of airport competition focused on local catchment areas. But today, in an aviation industry that is consolidating to a few airlines that can quickly re-deploy their aircraft to more profitable routes, airports have to compete for airline services on a pan-European basis. As a result, airports are constrained by the buyer power of their customers. Airports do not have thousands of individual customers, but only a dozen or so buyers with significant influence. Further, large hub airports are under pressure from the ‘super connector’ airlines’ hubs in the Gulf as well as hub-bypass. The need to maintain transfer passenger volume is strong driver of charges reductions.

Chair: Harry Bush, Director, H2B2 Ltd
Andrew Meaney, Partner, Oxera Consulting LLP
Nazzarena Franco, Vice-chair of the ACI EUROPE Economics Committee, Strategy Planning & IR Director, Bologna Airport
Warren Mundy, Chief Economist, Australian Airports Association
Henrik Mørch, Director, Markets and cases V: Transport, Post and other services, DG COMP
Peter Alawani, Chief, Economic Regulatory Framework Section, Air Transport Bureau (ATB), International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)
James Wiltshire, Head of Analysis, IATA Economics)

PART TWO - CASE STUDIES (PRESENTATIONS)
What have airports done to ‘win’ new routes? How do airports demonstrate their potential to airlines to gain new air services? What product does an airport need to focus on? How can development of surface connections help an airport compete more broadly? And how will self-connections change airport competition?

Chair: Lars Jønstrup Dollerup, Chief Financial Officer, Copenhagen Airport
Francesco Ciarmatori, Managing Partner, Aragon Partners
Raffaele Pasquini, Head of Marketing & Business Development, Aeroporti di Roma
Mike Brown, Director of Business Intelligence, Greater Toronto Airports Authority
Edward Shelswell-White, Principal, ICF

The Economist wrote in November that the battle for Monarch Airline’s slots after its bankruptcy “is a sign of how much the system for allocating them harms competition and consumers.” The newspaper concludes that despite the challenges “the case for change is nonetheless clear.” What is the way forward? How can the true value of slots be found, and how should the value that is created with a slot be allocated?

Chair: Andrew Charlton, Managing Director, Aviation Advocacy
Beryl Brown, Head of Competition and Markets, CAA
Gunter Heinrich, Head of Airport Slot Management, Fraport
Jagoda Egeland, Economist, Infrastructure Planning Lead, International Transport Forum at the OECD
John Hanlon, Head of International Government and Industry Relations, Norwegian
Diarmuid O'Conghaile, Head of Regulation, Ryanair

Robin Springthorpe, Partner/Solicitor, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP

Royal Institute of British Architects, London - for more information click here

Chair: Kata Cserep, Vice President, Airports, ICF

Today, 69% of countries have some sort of airport networks and nearly half of the World’s airports belong to airport networks. Airport networks have also come to support equal opportunities in terms of accessibility, connectivity and economic development. By ensuring the sustainable funding of smaller non-economically viable airports, in compliance with ICAO’s guidelines, airport networks have become essential to safeguard and enhance connectivity for all regions concerned - ensuring that all areas remain interconnected without any community being neglected. But the network model is being challenged. What can future regulation do to address concerns and advance the network model?

Chair: Stefano Baronci, Director of Economics & Programme Development, ACI World
Jaime Garcia-Legaz Ponce, Chief Executive Officer, Aena
Alexander Zinell, Chief Executive Officer, Fraport Greece Management Company
Seshadri Suresh, Member (Finance), Airports Authority of India
Zouhair Mohamed El Aoufir, Chief Executive Officer, ONDA

Interviewer: John Strickland, Director, JLS Consulting
Martin Eurnekian, Chief Executive Officer, Aeropuertos Argentina 2000

Reliance on private investors to provide financing for investment in capacity to meet the future demand will increase as governments step back. What do investors look for in the frameworks for regulation and operations? What do investors want in terms of transparency and consistency. What do investors seek during a privatisation to make it interesting? In sum, it is clear that investor appetite for airports is increasing, and this means that airports and regulatory systems must be considered in depth.

Chair: Cristian Nedelcu, Director Equity Research, UBS Investment Bank
Alejandro Gaffner, Partner, Oliver Wyman
Michael McGhee, Partner, GIP
Nicolas Notebaert, Chief Executive Officer, VINCI Concessions & Chairman, VINCI Airports
Andrew Blease, Associate Managing Director, Infrastructure Finance, Moody’s Investors Services Ltd
Rafael Echevarne, Chief Executive Officer, MBJ Airport
Jerónimo Olleros, Corporate Development Project Director, Ferrovial Aeropuertos

A wide range of regulatory approaches have evolved to address the equally wide range of circumstances in which airports operate. For many years now airports have operated as commercial entities and not as public utilities, and the shift of the airline industry globally away from one of fragmented flag carriers to one of regional powerhouses and global alliances means that airports face fewer customers. Regulators have to be careful to not move too quickly but also adjust to the actual situation and its likely development. What are regulators doing around the world to adapt to the changing market and what does this mean for the range of regulatory approaches?

Chair: Dan Elliott, Board Director and Founder, FRONTIER Economics Ltd
Christophe Dussart, Deputy Head of Unit, European Commission
Andrea Camanzi, President, Italian Transport Regulation Authority
Kurt Daels, Chair of the ACI EUROPE Economics Committee & Head of Regulation, Contracts & Charges, Brussels Airport
Cathy Mannion, Commissioner, Irish Aviation Regulator
Salvatore Sciacchitano, Executive Secretary, European Civil Aviation Conference
Martin Thelle, Partner, Managing Director, Copenhagen Economics