Cross-border Airport Concepts

Airports located closely to the border between two (or more) countries, naturally attract passengers from all bordering countries, to whom different emigration/immigration controls may apply. Influenced by specific nature of the catchment area some of these airports evolved to, so called, cross-border airports. Such airports offer multiple border controls, making that way airport access to all passenger from the catchment area more convenient and airport itself more attractive. Without multiple controls, passengers whose origin/destination country is not the same as the country of airport location would have to cross border control twice – on their way to the airport and again at the airport (for international flights). Four concepts of cross-border airports are presented in the paper – depending on airport infrastructure location and agreement between the countries on their (common or separate) usage. The concepts are defined based on existing solutions and their possible evolution from authors’ perspective. To the best of our knowledge, there is no referent literature addressing the concept of cross-border airports. Each concept is supported by real-life examples and airports that hold perspective of adopting cross-border concept in the future. Apart from being very convenient for common investment of the two or more bordering countries, concept of cross-border airports is also seen as one possible (temporarily or long-term) solution for politically sensitive regions, for the regions with unclear and/or partially unaccepted status (e.g. Gibraltar, Cyprus, etc.).