Airport curfew and scheduling differentiation: Domestic versus international competition

Abstract

This study investigates the strategic flight departure scheduling on domestic and short-haul international routes from regional airports in Korea. Airport-level data were constructed for non-stop routes from 2010 to 2018. This study examines the effects of changes in scheduling constraints induced by airport night curfews on domestic and international routes through competition intensity. The empirical findings suggest that competition leads to less differentiated flight departure times on domestic routes from the two regional airports. However, competition leads to more differentiated flight departure times on international routes from Daegu airport, which has a new night curfew, while a clustered departure pattern is found for international routes from Cheongju airport. An obvious pattern of differentiated departure times is found after the easing of night curfews in 2014, along with the expansion in LCCs.