Air travel is about to get even less romantic

Enjoy those duty-free cathedrals while you can: Airports need to be more utilitarian and more numerous

For all the disagreement in the industry about the future of aviation, there’s perfect accord on one point: There’s going to be a lot more of it.

The world’s air passengers flew a combined 7.64 trillion kilometres (4.75 trillion miles) in 2017, according to Boeing Co.’s latest 20-year market outlook. By 2037, that will rise to 18.97 trillion kilometres, with about 40 percent of the increase happening within five intra-regional markets: China, India, North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.

That’s sparking a battle over the biggest bottleneck holding back this growth: Airports. The governments that still own many of them should be