Aviation is undergoing a transformation. Advancements in technology are enabling innovations in regional and on-demand aviation. Many challenges are currently being addressed, including community acceptance, safety, equity, issues around planning and implementation, airspace, and operations.

As airport leaders look to the future, it is important to consider how airports will fund their operations and investments and balance the risks in providing services to their customers and users while maintaining sound balance sheets.

With a major drop in U.S. transit ridership since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an increased understanding of infectious disease in confined spaces and the role of droplets and particles in transmission has been increasingly important to the bus industry. A combination of experiments, models, and simulations in fluid dynamics has been employed to understand how aerosols move in spaces containing people.

For years, transportation systems, including aviation, have operated within a framework that has resulted in systemic inequality and even overt racism. To address this, airports have begun implementing new organizational dynamics and approaches.