Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.
Great Britain pioneered the trend in 1987 when it sold seven airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick, in a public share offering for $2.5 billion.
The new owner, BAA PLC, has since invested more than $5 billion in the seven airports and last year alone paid $340 million in taxes on profits to the British government. Contrast that with U.S. airports, most of which are tax users.
Over the last two years, more than 60 airports were sold or leased to private owners around the world, from Australia and Mexico to Germany and Italy. Because these transactions occurred recently, the prices (or rents) paid by investors can be used by local U.S. officials to determine the potential value of their airport.
It turns out many American cities are sitting on a source of extraordinary untapped wealth.
Using the "per-enplaned passenger basis," an industry rule of thumb that ties the value of an airport to the number of passengers it serves each year, the potential worth of the top 71 U.S. airports falls somewhere between $90 billion and $100 billion.
Consider Atlanta's Hartsfield and Chicago's O'Hare, the nation's busiest airports. Each serves more than 30 million passengers a year and each may be worth as much as $5.5 billion.
New York could gain up to $5 billion through the sale of Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
Both Los Angeles International and Dallas-Ft. Worth could fetch more than $4.5 billion each, while Miami International might bring in as much as $3 billion.
http://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/airport-privatizationthe-windfall-denied-us-cities
