ABSTRACT
There are many difficulties in assessing the economic impact of airports on their hinterland. Table 14.5 indicates that the regional employment impact of Manchester airport becomes more difficult to estimate as one seeks to measure ripple effects further away from the direct employment at the airport itself. The highest claim made for employment impacts is the cited ‘preliminary view that the second runway could make the airport responsible for between 78,000 and 104,000 jobs.’ Such estimates depend on the assumptions made and these should be clearly specified. While they find that the York Consulting estimate of jobs dependent on Manchester Airport ‘is reasonably close to that of the CLES (Centre for Local Economic Strategies) study…the process of calculation is just as unclear’ Some of the definitions are difficult to interpret. For example, in the York study, the transportation impact of the airport ‘is not defined rigorously but appears to represent the intangible benefits of the infrastructure the employment effects of which are said to overlap with, but are additional to, those from the direct and indirect economic impact’
Twomey and Tomkins’ own research from the Census of Employment data shows that in the linkage between air transport services and industry
in the North West the numbers involved are relatively low compared with air transport itself and that the estimated linkage effect of support transport services is negligible in terms of total employment.
