New Metrics. New Planning Imperatives. The Airports:USA Forecast highlights and trends will be discussed at a special session at the Summit. In the meantime, here are some numbers to consider:

1.7%. The year-over-year enplanement change 2012 v 2011, through June.

0.8%. The Airports:USA forecast for the full year enplanements, 2012 v 2011. Point: airline capacity reductions already scheduled will result in very slow - or no - enplanement expansion in the 2nd half of 2012.

< 1.5%. The annual rate of enplanement growth between 2013 through 2017. The go-go-years of expecting air traffic to expand mightily and forever are over. Financial & facility planners: take note.

5.5 Million. The increase in enplanements forecast for Atlanta, 2017 v 2012 - the #1 airport in enplanement growth - more than double the increases projected at #2 JFK (2.6 million), #3 DFW (2.5 million), and #3 CLT (2.4 million.) Note that the Atlanta numbers are particularly impressive given that the Airports:USA forecast assumes a decline at ATL in 2013 - 2014 as Southwest replaces AirTran, mainly due to Southwest's intention not to focus on connecting traffic, as AirTran did.

7.1%, 8.3%, 8.9%. The forecast passenger growth rates for hubsite airports, large non-hubsite airports, and regional airports, 2017 v 2012. Total passenger growth combined will be 8.0%.

1.62. The 2013 ratio of enplanements to passengers. This means that every passenger trip, on average, generates 1.6 enplanements. The ratio drops slightly to 1.60 by 2017, but it still indicates that the hub-and-spoke system is here to stay.

42%. Underscoring the above, this is the percentage of Southwest traffic at MDW that is connecting as of the 1Q of 2012. Southwest is now for all intents and purposes, a hubbing airline.

494.9 Million. The number of passengers making air trips in 2017. These will generate 794.9 million enplanements.

+ 200. The number of 50-seat jets coming out of the North American airline system in the next three years. Watch for a much more rapid grounding of these airliners than currently expected. (This is at variance with ambient thinking, - at least for now. But Boyd Group International forecasts were the first to predict a glut of 50-seaters - and that was back in 2002. The rest of the industry disagreed, because at the time "everybody knew" that RJs were the "wave of the future.")

CRJ-700s. Watch for economics to catch up with these airliners in the next five years, too. Great airplanes. But in shifting them to dual class configuration, as most carriers are doing, they effectively lose ten salable seats. In typical 6/60 configuration, the six first class seats tend to be used for freebie upgrades, not direct sales. Ergo, the 70 seaters are now 60-seaters in terms of revenue potential. The larger CRJ-900/1000s have the economics to be long-term and important players, however.

215.6 Million. That's the number of US enplanements in 2017 that will be directly or indirectly the result of international demand. It will be near 30% of all US passenger traffic. Message to airports: Low fares to Orlando are nice, but your international access is far more important in being part of the global economy.

CRJ-700s. Watch for economics to catch up with these airliners in the next five years, too. Great airplanes. But in shifting them to dual class configuration, as most carriers are doing, they effectively lose ten salable seats. In typical 6/60 configuration, the six first class seats tend to be used for freebie upgrades, not direct sales. Ergo, the 70 seaters are now 60-seaters in terms of revenue potential. The larger CRJ-900/1000s have the economics to be long-term and important players, however.