Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Growth among small airports serving metropolitan cities has slowed from the vigorous rates seen in the early 1990s, according to statistics from the City Centre Airports Association (CCAA). While this industry typically enjoyed double-digit expansion before mid-decade, passenger numbers moving through CCAA member airports has become much more stable in the past five years.
The phenomenon stems largely from increased environmental pressures and a general lack of sector expansion after a period in which such enterprises grew in popularity, particularly in Europe (see table below). CCAA comprises 10 city-based operations, but has seen its membership ebb and flow since the trade group was formed in 1993. For example, some 14 such airports have belonged to the association at different times.
Four CCAA members–Bern Belp (in Switzerland), Florence (Italy), London City (UK), and Rotterdam (Netherlands)–have boasted annual gains in traffic since 1993. After growth in the early period, traffic at Belfast City (UK) stabilized at 1.3 million passengers annually, but following construction of a new terminal and transfer of services from the main Northern Ireland airport it expects to see further increases. Stockholm Bromma, the Swedish capital’s main airport before Arlanda was built, has seen little increase in the past two years, with traffic levels remaining close to one million.
Suffering a downturn in the past two or three years have been Berlin Tempelhof (another former major airport) and Gothenburg City (Sweden), the latter now a shadow of its former self, with numbers last year less than 20 percent of those seen three years earlier. Germany’s Monchengladbach, which operates as Dusseldorf Express, has not maintained the strong growth that characterized its first four years, with traffic down by a third last year, according to the unqualified CCAA statistics.
The member airports, which saw an almost 5-percent overall growth rate last year and an increase of more than 45 percent over the past five years, are currently in the throes of change as they consider relationships with other industry groups. 
Association Seeks Stronger ERA Ties An initiative to move closer to the European Regions Airline Association (ERA) has, at least for the moment, not moved forward. While the ERA counts a number of airports among its associate member, the two groups have not reached agreement on a suggested reciprocal arrangement. “We proposed to ERA that we would be members of each other’s organizations, but ERA was not ready for this,” claimed CCAA secretary general Bjorn Rotsman.
The recruitment of Split Airport (on the Adriatic coast) and Gothenburg City in the past 12 months marks a successful membership campaign, and CCAA remains optimistic about further growth. Rotsman aspires to establish a U.S. chapter within the group, but acknowledges that attempts to attract city airport operators in Australia have failed.
Following its annual conference in Florence this summer, the association appointed Monchengladbach’s Hartmut-Rudiger Simon as chairman, replacing London City managing director Richard Goodman. One resolution arising from that meeting was a decision to make membership more attractive to smaller airports. As a result of the recruitment drive Rotsman conceded that CCAA “needs to do something about our membership fees.”
Environmental Issues Paramount The secretary general told AIN that almost all the main issues facing city airports relate to environment considerations: noise, emissions and the ability of aircraft to perform steep approaches and operate from short runways. The CCAA has as its primary goal partnerships with airframe and engine manufacturers to ensure aircraft meet city airport environmental requirements: “We are starting to make progress, but it seems that things start to happen [only] when airlines put money behind [research and development],” said Rotsman, who recognizes that he needs to represent a larger constituency of members. “The more airports, the more power we have to create change.”
Secondly, the group is working to encourage an increase of knowledge and experience among members beyond that available through the larger Airports Council International, which represents the interests of all airports worldwide. Indeed, Rotsman claims that city airports are often at the leading edge of developments because their proximity to local communities can mean that such operators face environmental pressures “several years” before major hubs.

City center airports suffer lull as sector growth diminishes

Growth among small airports serving metropolitan cities has slowed from the vigorous rates seen in the early 1990s, according to statistics from the City C

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