Airport development is a highly controversial process with communities becoming increasingly aware of the negative impacts that air transport operations can have on the local and global environment. Such environmental impacts have the potential to constrain growth and cause airport community conflict, as well as posing operational challenges including scheduling problems and reduced runway capacity. Thus, if the air transport industry is to grow sustainably it must simultaneously meet the needs of society and contribute to economic development, whilst limiting damage to the environment. In response to this challenge, in 2003 the UK Department for Transport published the Government aviation policy document The Future of Air Transport which invited airports forecast to have a minimum of 20,000 air transport movements per year to produce a Master Plan that documented their development proposals to 2030, and the likely adverse social and environmental impacts. Airports were recommended to engage with stakeholders during this process, thereby facilitating a range of stakeholder groups' involvement in development processes. A review of key literature explores the air transport industry, stakeholder engagement, and environmental assessment procedures to provide a lens through which Master Plans can be assessed and best practice from the external procedures established. It was revealed that there is a clear connectivity between Master Plans, environmental management, and public participation; and as such the core outcomes that could be achieved from the strategic planning process include improved environmental performance, social learning and sustainable development. The content of the Master Plans produced by the airports owned and operated by BAA and Manchester Airports Group were reviewed to evaluate the methods employed by reference to the established best practice. From this, three initial case study airports were examined, Heathrow, Stansted and Manchester; followed by a fourth verification case study of Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Document analysis and interviews with key actors were utilised to explore the master planning processes, identify current practice and outline areas for improvement. Principle findings identified that Master Plans have the potential to yield more environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable development outcomes, however, this potential has largely not been realised. Master planning was hindered by the non-statutory nature of the master plan process; the flexibility afforded by the Department for Transport Master Plan Guidance; the absence of follow up or repercussions for poor master planning processes; and airports apparent reluctance to fully engage with stakeholders. It is therefore recommended that future master planning includes the publication of more prescriptive guidance; the provision of airport training to highlight the benefits of undertaking a comprehensive process; the introduction of repercussions if Master Plans fall below a certain standard such as an audit or a published review to identify poor practice; and the introduction of elements of environmental assessment procedure best practice. This thesis presents the most recent and comprehensive assessment of master planning for UK airports, advancing previous reviews through comparisons with external procedures. The research is both novel and timely particularly given the scope for policy changes within the UK air transport industry and the policy commitments to sustainable development. A significant contribution to knowledge is made through the original comparison between Master Plans and environmental assessment procedures and the subsequent establishment of criteria to enhance future master plans. Furthermore, the thesis contributes to the development of theories of participatory decision making and advances the debate on stakeholder engagement and its utility within the aviation sector, providing well-timed recommendations to both airports and policy makers.

Correct assignment of airport resources can greatly affect the quality of service which airlines and airports provide to their customers. Good assignments can help airlines and airports to keep to published schedules, by minimising changes in these schedules and reducing delays. Given the expected increases in civil air traffic, the complexities of resource scheduling and assignment continue to increase. For this reason, as well as the dynamic nature of the problems, scheduling and assignment are becoming increasingly more difficult. The assignment of baggage sorting stations to flights is one of the resource assignment problems at an airport, and like many other real world optimisation problems, it naturally has several objectives, which conflict with each other. A model of the problem is presented, different approaches to obtaining good solutions are looked at and studied to gain an insight into their qualities. Furthermore, algorithms are studied to improve the already good solutions obtained by the approaches considered and their performance is studied where some characteristics of the problem change, such as the number of baggage sorting stations or the topology of the airport. Changes to the flight schedule on the day of operation may invalidate previous assignments of flights to resources. These perturbations may not only affect the disrupted flights but also other flights already assigned. Some existing approaches are looked at, and others are suggested to take account of these potential perturbations at the time the assignments are generated with the aim of mitigating their detrimental effect on the day of operation. The constructive search algorithms and robustness methods are potentially important in a wider variety of problems other than the Airport Baggage Sorting Station Assignment Problem (ABSSAP). By way of illustration, the same techniques are applied to the widely studied Airport Gate Assignment Problem (AGAP).