Airport Planning and Design – Legal and Professional Competence Requirements

Airport design and planning considerably differs from the design of other transport infrastructure. The reasons are the wide scope of regulation in civil aviation and the lack of links between the Civil Aviation Act and the Building Act. The effect is that the sequence of procedures, negotiation, and/or document approval is not clearly defined. The situation is further complicated by the fact that an airport is a unique construction both for the investor and for the local building authority. The paper is an outcome of our research, building on long-term experience in airport planning and design, and the elucidation of planning and approval processes with experts from the Transport Authority and the Ministry of Transport and Construction of the Slovak Republic.