Whitehall seeks lone C++ coder to keep airport passenger model flying

Government offers £100K to support software forecasting how travelers choose departure hubs

The UK's Department for Transport is offering up to £100,000 over three years for access to a C++ programmer who can keep a module of its airport usage model up in the air.

The module is part of the National Aviation Passenger Allocation Model, or NAPAM [PDF], which forecasts passenger airport choices.

It consists of about 10,000 lines of code written in a Microsoft .NET C++ environment with Excel used for data input and output. It carries out iterative calculations until these hit a set value such as an airport's maximum number of passengers.

The department has set a maximum budget of £100,000, excluding VAT over three years, starting from April 27, 2026.

The job also states: "This budget is non-committal – therefore the Authority cannot guarantee volume and spend."

The supplier will provide technical support and work alongside transport modelers, economists, and analysts to develop and maintain the model.

Given the money on offer, the C++ programmer concerned seems likely to spend a fraction of his or her time on the job.

NAPAM covers 29 UK airports with international flights and four overseas hubs – Amsterdam Schiphol, Dubai, Frankfurt, and Paris Charles de Gaulle – that are popular with Brits.

It uses data on where passengers live, road and rail transport times and costs, airport and aircraft capacities, and destinations, using passenger surveys carried out by the Civil Aviation Authority.

The model has been around since at least 2010 when it was peer reviewed for the department and revised several times since then, including in 2017, 2022, and 2024. In 2020, the department spent £96,763 with the UK unit of Jacobs, a Dallas-based consultancy, on an update. ®