Airport Business - 34

FBO MATTERS
AUTHOR Douglas Wilson

Ground Transportation:

THE PARKING LOT AND THE WHITE ELEPHANT
PREDICTIONS MADE a decade in advance of
technological maturation are notoriously difficult,
occasionally embarrassing those who may seem
Nostradamus-like at the time. The Brabazon
Committee, set up amid a war-torn England at the
behest of Winston Churchill in December of 1942, is
a classic example.
With peace still some two and a
half years away, Churchill and other
planners were already looking to a
prosperous, post-war England in which
transatlantic passenger travel by aircraft
would be the norm. He leaned on
Lord Brabazon to head a committee
to create the specifications for a massive
aircraft capable of carrying passengers
in sumptuous luxury on transatlantic
f lights. By 1944, as war raged on, the
Brabazon Committee recommendation
for a transatlantic airliner capable of
non-stop London to New York service
was provided to the British Air Ministry,
who in turn issued specification 2/44
for would-be-bidders. The Bristol
Aeroplane Company answered the call,
yet it would not be until September of
1949 that the massive Type 167 Bristol
Brabazon took to the air in pursuit of
the award of specification 2/44. With
a 230-foot wingspan, and eight radial

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DOUGLAS WILSON

Douglas Wilson is the president and
founder of FBO Partners, LLC, an aviation
consultancy providing business management advisory services to Fixed Base Operations (FBOs.). Wilson can be reached
at douglas.wilson@fbopartners.com

engines driving four counter-rotating
propellers via complex gearbox, it was a
marvel of post-war engineering. It was
also a white elephant. Unfortunately
for Bristol, a slightly smaller jet
airliner, called the de Havilland Comet
f lew three months earlier, in July of
1949. The jet age had arrived. And,
exactly 10 years after the Air Ministry
specif ication 2/44 was released,
Boeing's 367-80, the forerunner to
the Boeing 707 f lew in 1954. Sadly,
the Bristol Brabazon wasn't around to
see it, having been scrapped in 1953.
Lord Brabazon's specifications for
a transatlantic airliner were largely
correct, unfortunately the technology
didn't mature until some 10 years
later. Aviation faces similar issues today.
Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) - the
generic parlance for virtually any form
of aircraft without a human on board
- are already plying navigable airways
alongside manned aircraft. Airports
are likewise considering how to
integrate both UAS and electric vertical
lift aircraft (eVTOLs) with existing
aircraft operations. Landside, FBOs
across the country are adding electric
vehicle charging stations in parking lots,
consistent with the trend in consumer
adoption of greener technologies. Yet like
Lord Brabazon, who apparently didn't
consider the jet-powered Messerschmitt

34 \ AIRPORTBUSINESS / MAY 2020

Me 262 or the Gloster Meteor - both of
which flew well before his committee's
transatlantic airliner recommendation
to the Air Ministry - the most likely
autonomous vehicle scenario to affect
FBOs and airports in the coming decade
is virtually ignored: Self-driving Cars.
According to a JD Power report
of 2019, while autonomous taxis may
find commercial acceptance as early
as 2025, by 2034, it is predicted some
10 percent of consumer vehicle will be
self-driving. In a mere 10 to 15 years, a
significant number of passenger vehicles
will no longer need to park at the
airport or FBO but will drive "home"
instead - without their owner. How
does that affect airports and FBOs? The
same way the jet age dashed the Bristol
Aeroplane Company's hopes. Driverless
cars will eventually relegate FBO and
airport parking lots to the scrap heap of

Airport Business

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