Airport commissioners were incensed this week that this newspaper characterized their Capital Improvement Plan as, well, a plan.

There are, of course, many rivers to cross before anything dramatic could happen at the airport. There are no bulldozers on the perimeter, ready to begin a massive reconstruction, as the commission chairman pointed out. After a mandatory environmental review, projects would still need federal, state and local permits, engineering studies, and a lot of money, most of which would come from the Federal Aviation Authority.

And, sure, at each of these steps, any part of the Plan could be altered, amended, or abandoned because of changing demand, public opposition, inability to secure funding or a dozen other reasons.

But what is a Capital Improvement Plan, if not a blueprint for an imagined future? Details of nine projects that constitute the Plan, with a proposed timeline for each, are included in a document filed by the airport with the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency, which is holding a hearing on Jan. 31 to take comments about its potential environmental impact.

At a meeting of the Airport Commission this week, consultants detailed some, but not all of the projects included in that Plan, suggesting that much of what was included were blue sky ideas to meet potential future demand that might never come to pass.

To be sure, there are many parts of the airport’s Plan that are clearly needed. Who would quarrel with efforts to maintain and upgrade existing runways, taxiways and ramps to ensure safety and efficiency? Many of the runways date to the airport’s Navy base origins and badly need reorienting and repaving, airport officials say.

A proposal to add a right turn lane to ease traffic from Airport Road exiting onto the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road is a welcome idea. And certainly something needs to be done to the terminal to accommodate the requirements of TSA screening and security. Passengers are currently herded into a makeshift outdoor holding area with no access to restrooms or other facilities. In the airport’s own 2016 Master Plan, four alternatives for dealing with this issue were outlined, with costs ranging from $100,000 to $7.7 million.

But the airport consultants also suggested that the addition of 549 parking spaces was “a worst case scenario,” while the document filed with MEPA includes this as part of a terminal expansion project with a proposed start date of 2022.

More details of the terminal expansion — and the projected $33.7 million budget for it — were included in a grant request to the FAA filed in August by the airport. In that document, the airport sought supplemental funding of $5.4 million from the FAA to cover Phase I design and permitting for a project that would double the size of the existing terminal and set a target construction start date of September 2020.

Why would the airport apply for $5.4 million in FAA funds for design and permitting of a major terminal expansion if it doesn’t intend to go forward with it?

That sure sounds like a plan.