Ladies and gentlemen, 

To the comics of my childhood, the 21st century was no less distant than Venus, no less strange than the Mekons. It was somewhere Dan Dare lived - riding anti-gravity machines, crossing galaxies in Star Trek rockets, and battling with villains from another dimension. It is hard, even now, to adjust our thoughts to the fact that the year 2000 is no longer in the realms of science fiction. Very soon it will be in the newspapers. 

'The 21st Century' still sounds remote and strange; in fact, it's just around the corner. 2000 AD is tomorrow. We are already developing a fairly clear picture of what it will look like. Indeed, there are people working at BAA right now on designing the facilities of the next century. A decade or two, after all, is not a long time, given the time lags inherent in large scale civil engineering projects. 

In a talk I gave recently to the Society of Engineers in Hong Kong I looked - among other things - at questions like the impact of developments in aircraft technology. Will HOTOL revolutionise the whole notion of an airport? Will Vertical Take-Off and Landing render airports obsolete overnight? Well I see from my programme that any comments I might have to offer on such questions would be fairly worthless, set against the contribution from the experts who will be addressing you over the next couple of days. So today I'd like to take a slightly different tack. 

While I will consider the physical, infrastructural implications of the next century, I would also like to suggest that such questions fall short of offering a comprehensive account of 'an airport'. What is 'an airport'? Is it just a collection of buildings and tarmac? Or is there more to it than that? 

As my starting point I'd like to quote the first two sentences from the conclusions of the recent CAA report on runways in the South East: 

"The location of major infrastructure, such as airports, can never be decided purely on grounds of the interests of the industry concerned. There is a whole range of other interests - social, industrial, environmental and so on - which has to be taken into account." 

On this, at least, I can wholeheartedly declare my agreement with the CAA! 

And I'd suggest that this principle extends beyond the bounds simply of 'the location of major infrastructure'. If I have a single fundamental message today, it would be this: we do not live in isolation; we must develop 21st century breadth of vision. 

It is a commonplace to say that the world gets smaller every day. The transport revolution of the last century has obliterated the barriers of miles. The communications revolution has dispensed with the barriers of time. What was a rather whimsical notion of the '60s - 'the global village' - is fast becoming reality. We live in a smaller world, and there are a lot more of us. In this context, single-issue, single-interest thinking is fast becoming obsolete. We are moving into a new world; we must learn to think in a new way. 

It is always difficult to see the broader picture. We are all busy people, with ten things to do today, and a hundred that have to be done by yesterday. And the pressures on us increase all the time. In the aviation industry, of course, one pressure dominates all others - the pressure of demand. Coping with apparently insatiable demand for more and more air travel keeps all our noses firmly stuck to the grindstone. That is why events like today's are so important: they give us all the opportunity to take a step back - to get at least a glimpse of how things look from the other side of the fence. 

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Growth is undoubtedly the overwhelmingly dominant factor confronting my industry - the airport industry - over the foreseeable future. Growth in volumes - certainly. But growth also in other related demands - just to add a twist to the pressure. We are being asked not only to accommodate ever-increasing numbers of passengers, but to accommodate them ever-more safely, ever-more efficiently, in ever pleasanter surroundings and, of course, with more concern for the wider environmental picture. 

We are the focus for an infinite and complex combination of demands - demands which present us with an infinite and complex combination of challenges. Fortunately we have no shortage of advisors. Indeed, almost everybody seems to know how airports should be run. Unfortunately the advice rarely proceeds from a comprehensive assessment of the situation. 

The problem, of course, is that the advice we receive is all too often single interest advice. Add two single interests and you almost always get a contradiction. Our job is to sort out the contradictions, invariably ending up with a compromise which fails fully to satisfy any one party. 

Never are these contradictions more vividly highlighted than in the aftermath of a major incident. Lockerbie, for an example, produced an inevitable barrage of media demands for much tighter security. Demands from the very same organs that during the preceding weeks and months had been demanding less delays. The fact that more security inevitably entails more delay is not the media's problem. Nor is this an isolated example. We at BAA are accustomed to facing mutually exclusive demands. Here are just a few: 

• Build more runways (but don't desecrate the countryside)

• Improve security (but don't cause delays) 

• Handle ever-increasing volumes (but don't allow congestion) 

• Cut back on retailing outlets (but provide a pleasant environment for our customers) 

• Spend spend spend (but don't make money) 
  

We are, in a phrase, being constantly asked to square the circle. 

Let me take just two recent examples. 

We have come under a great deal of pressure from airlines over recent years for dedicating what they see as an untenable proportion of constrained terminal space on retailing. 'Give us more baggage facilities and sign-in desks', they cry, 'you're just being greedy for profits.' Yet the environments we have created such as those at Gatwick North, Heathrow's Terminal 4 and Stansted, have proven enormously popular with the airlines' own customers. People like the fact that London's airports are no longer purely functional - that if they have to wait for their flight, they can at least enjoy the wait. And how better to find the cash for the vast investments involved in meeting the demands of our ever-more discriminating customers than by providing them with facilities for which they are happy to pay? 

Given a basic premise of constrained resources and conflicting demands, you simply cannot make all the people happy all the time. What you have to do is try to find some equitable balance. We think we do a pretty good job of achieving just that. We take it as read that we get no credit for our endeavours. 

Again, the airlines have been attacking us for years, demanding another runway in the south-east. Many of them, I think, suspect that only financial considerations stand in the way. The reason BAA won't build another runway is simply because runways cost money, and BAA don't like spending money. The fact that we've invested over £1 billion over the last five years, and are set to spend another £1 billion over the next five goes unnoticed. No - we're not building a runway because we're tight-fisted profiteers. Full stop. 

To listen to some of the airlines, you'd think providing a new runway was just a question of slapping down a mile of tarmac. The CAA, fortunately, has a rather more realistic assessment of what's involved. In their recent report, they looked at the question of a new runway from two basic angles:

• What would be the implications for ATC of any particular option? 

• What would be the implications for customer access for any particular option? 

Their conclusions were that with the improvements in ATC currently in progress, ATC could accommodate a new runway just about anywhere - albeit with a bit of jigging - and that customer access would tend to point to Heathrow as the best choice for a new runway, with Gatwick second and Stansted third. 

But they also said, and we agree, that 'no additional runway capacity to meet demand in the South East will be justified until the existing capacity at the present major South East airports is virtually full.' We would go further. Not only would new runways be unjustifiable while existing ones offer unused capacity, they would be politically quite impossible. 

We would also suggest that the two criteria chosen to assess new runway proposals were too restrictive. Indeed, the CAA could be held to have somewhat overlooked its own insistence on considering the wider implications of major developments. 

A runway is not just a runway. A runway needs to be serviced. As a rough rule of thumb, a new runway needs to be serviced by two new terminals. Already the implications in terms of land - in the land-starved south-east - are doubled if not tripled. We also have to consider the impact in the local community: are there houses available for the incoming workforce? What about schools for their children? Can the local hospitals meet the strain? Last but by no means least, what would be the environmental and ecological impact? 

A new runway is not just a new strip of tarmac: it is a new complex interconnecting combination of demands, none of which can be ignored or treated in isolation. While assailed on all sides by particular lobbies, we at BAA have to try to take a step back and look at the wider picture. 

Here, I think, we are approaching the nub of the question. Because we at BAA represent, I think, the face of airports operators to come. We are not at any one interest's beck and call. We have autonomy, and we are not afraid to exercise it. 

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The traditional view of airports was neatly summarised by Sir Colin Marshall at this conference back in May when he asked, among other questions, 

"How do we persuade airports that they are service centres and not duty-free shopping centres?" 

I'm afraid my response to that is to say 'when will the airlines realise that we are not simply their service centres?' 

The airlines, traditionally, have seen airports as very much the junior partners in the aviation industry, if not merely their servants. This, I'm afraid, is changing. We at BAA have attracted a fair amount of acrimony over recent years, because we have quite deliberately adopted a higher profile and a more assertive stance. And I would suggest that if anyone wants to know what the airport of the future will look like, they should look not so much at physical layout as at status within the industry. The servility of the past is, I suggest, on the way out. The assertive airport is the airport of the future. 

There is a good reason underlying this. Simply, the growth with which we are all familiar. The days when airports had all the capacity they needed to meet the existing demand are long gone. We are now suppliers of a highly valuable commodity in very limited supply. As Sir Colin himself put it: 

"Airport traffic slots are replacing platinum as a value standard. By 1995, in the USA, only one major airport - Memphis - will be working below capacity limits." 

As the suppliers of those slots, we inevitably gain leverage. Whether the airlines like it or not, it will become a worldwide phenomenon over the next twenty years. Airports worldwide are becoming steadily more autonomous. 

With increased power comes increased responsibility. Given that we at BAA now have a large (though, I would stress, by no means total) degree of autonomy, how do we plan to exercise it? I would like to divide my answer into two distinct areas: internal, and external. By 'internal' I mean activities relating to our operation of airports in the traditional, narrow sense of physical layout. By 'external' I refer to airports as seen in the wider context: as part of the aviation industry; as part of the total world transport picture; as part of society at large. 

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Internally, there is no question about our major priority over the foreseeable future: security. The events of the last five years have left no room for compromise on this one fundamental: we must and will take absolutely every effort, and make every necessary investment, to protect our customers and our people. 

Unfortunately many terminals worldwide date from earlier and less dangerous times, and adapting to the new climate involves disruption. Furthermore, ad hoc adjustments to existing facilities can never be watertight. In this situation, there is no substitute for skilled and vigilant people, which is why we have expanded our security staff by xxx over the last twelve months. 

In future, terminals will be built with security as an integral element in the design from the very outset. Outgoing and incoming passengers will be kept separate as a matter of course; screening technology will improve in sophistication; and new developments such as machine-readable passports will act as a powerful barrier to deny access to terrorists. 

Risk, unfortunately, can never be entirely eliminated; but reducing it to the lowest levels humanly and technologically possible will be a dominant feature in the design, construction and operation of airports into the 21st Century. 

Terminal design, layout and operation will also reflect another fundamental imperative of our times - customer responsiveness. 

Like many other industries, the airport industry is responding to customer pressures for more and better. The days when the average industry said to the average customer, 'that's what we offer - take it or leave it' are over. If the airports are becoming more assertive vis-a-vis the aviation community, they are becoming more humble vis-a-vis the customer. Nowadays we, like most other industries, are more likely to say to the customer 'you're the boss. What do you want? We'll provide it.' 

So we'll be responding to demands for more speed and efficiency in the system as a whole; more baggage assistance; better information systems; better facilities for the disabled; and better value for money overall. We'll also be responding to customers' legitimate demands for less congestion, uncertainty and general hassle, and shorter queues, walking distances and waiting times. 

In short, we as a generation raised on air travel have become blase, and hence demanding. Where yesterday's passenger regarded him or herself as honoured simply by virtue of flying at all, today's passenger is impatient for a total air transport system with minimum fuss and maximum enjoyment. 

Some passengers want more still. Business travellers, for example, demand not just quick and efficient access to and through the airport, but good facilities while there. So there'll undoubtedly be a steady increase in terminals offering special business facilities, such as those now at Vienna, Frankfurt and Heathrow's Terminal 1. 

Apart from fax machines and dedicated phone lines, we'll see a lot more sophisticated technology coming into airports: 

• Computerised baggage-handling systems based on bar codes and networked to centralised databases, minimising the chances of passenger and baggage getting separated. 

• Passenger self-help technology, with self-booking, self-ticketing, self check-in - all helping passengers to help themselves enjoy a speedier and more efficient service. 

More generally, I think we'll see future terminals being constructed along the lines being followed at Stansted: modular designs which can be speedily adapted to meet incremental increases in volumes, with minimum disruption to day-to-day services. 

Last on the internal programme - but by no means least - will be increasing sensitivity to the environment. To take just two examples from our recent developments: 

• In building the new North Terminal at Gatwick, we have undertaken a new five year landscaping and planting programme; built a series of mounds to provide visual screening for local residents; and diverted a river to create a floodplain, which is being planted with rare species. 

• At Stansted, the development plan includes the planting of no less than a quarter of a million new trees and shrubs, while various rare species of both animals and plants found on the site have been carefully transplanted to a specially dedicated four and a half hectare preservation area. 

Efforts such as these will certainly be maintained here in the UK, and I expect to see them playing a larger part in the design of future facilities worldwide. 

And what of the future for airports in the sense which I have called 'external'; airports seen in the wider context of society as a whole? 

Here, I think, you will see increasing evidence of airports' developing heft. 

We are subject to a whole range of factors that are well outside our direct control. Most crucially, air traffic control and surface access. Airports have been contributing to debates on these topics for a number of years, but I think you will see their voices becoming more insistent as the balance of influence shifts in their favour. 

On Air Traffic Control there are heartening signs that Europe is at last beginning to get its act together. It will not be easy to work towards a more unified system - against a background of historical barriers and legitimate worries over security - but progress is undoubtedly being made. The introduction of CCF and INERC are welcome moves in the right direction, and should see us into the next century. By which time, perhaps, 1992 really will have arrived, and begun a quantum shift in perception, to the point where we begin to acknowledge the fact that we really are all in this together. 

Without wishing to open the can of worms marked United States of Europe, I see encouraging signs that in aviation - the quintessential international industry - our historical fondness for independence is giving way to awareness of our inextricable interdependence. 

Domestically, sadly, progress is rather more problematic. 

We at BAA are acutely aware that a significant proportion of the public's perception of us is in the hands of organisations over which we have little if any control. People assess their journey not simply in the airport, or even in the airports plus flight, but in the total journey from their front door to their ultimate destination. Unfortunately, until we can simply say 'beam me to Heathrow, Scotty', we're at the mercy of the available surface transport infrastructure. Which, in London at least, is swiftly strangling into near-paralysis. 

Road and rail are the terrible twins. Since the disappearance of the Greater London Council, London's road planning has been left in the hands of 32 separate boroughs, with no-one setting an overall agenda, or planning with an eye to the broad picture. Yet without coherent action, there are increasing signs that London is approaching paralysis through traffic congestion. 

On the rails the situation is, if possible, even more farcical. I'm sure nobody here needs to be told about the difficulties and frustrations of getting to and from Heathrow. Yet a solution is available: the Heathrow Express rail link. We and British Rail have agreed the scheme between ourselves, planned it, costed it, adapted it in recognition of environmental concerns, and are willing to finance the entire £235 million costs of the project. It will not cost the taxpayer a penny. It will, through diverting traffic from the roads, reduce congestion on some of the busiest roads in Europe. And it will take people to Heathrow from Paddington in just 16 minutes - in airline style and comfort. 

So what's the catch? The catch is archaic planning regulations which mean that even now - when the scheme has universal all-party support - we are still awaiting the go-ahead to build. This, I would humbly suggest, is barmy. 

We desperately need a solution to London's surface access problems: only Victorian legislation prevents us from taking a substantial step in the right direction. 

Externally, then, I think you can expect to see more airports authorities following our lead in becoming more vocal in pressing for action on factors which impact on their operations, while lying outside their direct control. Surface access is a classic case in point. We can maintain the safest most efficient most user-friendly facilities in the world; but if the passenger's snarled up in traffic on the M25, it's all for nothing. 

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So to summarise: 

• On runways, I think we can expect to see an increasing emphasis on the better use of existing runways, with building seen as an option to be avoided until unavoidable. Perhaps less so in places like America and Australia, where land grows on trees, but certainly in congested countries like those in Europe, where every square metre is precious. 

• On terminals, we will see security at the top of the agenda for the foreseeable future. Lockerbie must never happen again. Lower down, the agenda will be largely dictated by the customer, who wants his or her air travel to be hassle free and enjoyable. We'll see terminals built with a view to future growth, and with more concern for the environment built in from the planning stages. 

• And on the broader picture, I think we can expect to see airports worldwide becoming less amenable to ill-informed bullying, and more vocal in pressing for solutions to problems which lie outside their direct control, yet which have a crucial impact on the total service they can offer their customers.