Critical success factors for offshore airports : a comparative evaluation

The booming aviation sector is worldwide increasingly faced with capacity constraints at both the land and air side. In recent years various countries have tried to overcome the land-based bottlenecks by the design and construction of new offshore airports. This paper aims to identify and assess the critical success factors for two recently built island airports, viz. in Hong Kong and Osaka. The analysis addresses success conditions at both the corporate and the regional level. The methodological basis for the comparative investigation deploys the so-called pentagon prism. The results show that island airports may seem to offer a favorable land use and environmental solution, but face at the same time severe financial and maritime ecology problems.