This forum will explore the impacts in the Metropolitan Washington region resulting from airports and aviation. Registration required.

The economic impact of an airport is a measure of the benefits it provides to the region. These benefits include the jobs, wages, and expenditures that take place at the airport. They also include the effects of these expenditures in moving from hand to hand through the community, enhancing economic activity far from the airport itself. Economic benefits also include expenditures made by those transient passengers who use the airport but spend their money at other locations.

Savings in time and money that the existence of the airport permits represent another economic benefit that resides with the community. Finally, economic benefits also include the intangible effect the airport has on business decisions to locate or remain in a specific area. Business location decisions based on airport availability are intangible and harder to identify and quantify. Unfortunately, these last benefits and the social values are difficult to measure.