OPENING ADDRESS

Mr W. T. Rodgers (Minister of State, Board of Trade) It gives me great pleasure to open this conference and to welcome it on behalf of Her Majesty's Government. The Institution of Civil Engineers, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Institute of Transport and the British Airports Authority, in association with the American Society of Civil Engineers, should be congratulated on their foresight, imagination and initiative in arranging a conference which is clearly both important and topical.

Airport planners today have a task that becomes ever more important but also more difficult. These difficulties seem to me to be attributable to three main causes.