A supply-side categorization of airports across global multiple-airport cities and regions

Abstract

Cities and regions with multiple airports providing commercial air service are common across the globe. Within these regions, both airlines and consumers have various opportunities to provide air transport services on the one hand, and consume them on the other. While a literature addressing features of consumer behavior related to multiple airports and their regions has developed over the past two decades, very little research has taken a comprehensive global view of the regions themselves, and more specifically, of the assortment of component airports. The results of the present paper provide structure to the activities at airports within multiple airport cities and regions as of 2015. Using hierarchical cluster analysis, 131 airports in 53 global multiple airport regions are analyzed utilizing supply-side variables such as aspects of competition, routes, and aircraft capacities among others. The results show that the airports, identified from the literature, can be classified into six primary groups. Some of the groups confirm prior expectation, for example based, upon size. Yet other groups are, at least on the surface, a bit more eclectic. Moreover, combinations of airport type in individual cities and regions vary widely across geographies, pointing to the complexity of places and the industry. As global commercial aviation continues to change quickly along multiple dimensions, understanding the roles airports play, and the ways airlines use them becomes enhanced. Multiple airport regions will provide both opportunities and difficulties in navigating these changes.