APPLYING THE METHOD OF MEASURING AIRPORT PRODUCTIVITY IN THE BALTIC REGION

Abstract

The author of the article describes the theoretical assumptions of the DEA method used for measuring the productivity of airports described in the article ‘Research into the methods of analysing the productivity indicators of transport terminals’ (Jaržemskienė 2009). The essential insights presented in the above mentioned paper reveal that Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a relatively new ‘data oriented’ approach to evaluating the performance of the so-called Decision Making Units (DMU) that convert multiple inputs into multiple outputs. The article focuses on the findings of the study carried out by the author in accordance with those assumptions. Research represents the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method testing 15 selected airports situated in the Baltic Region, including Vilnius, Kaunas, Palanga, Riga, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Turku, Stockholm, Malme, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Gdansk, Warsaw and Minsk. Airport productivity indicators are ranked considering importance and using the method of Delphi expert survey made of two rounds. The author presented the following indicators (expressed as ‘ratio’) as the major ones estimated by PAX/LAND, AIR/LAND, PAX/AIR, PAX/RW, PAX/RWA, GA and INTER experts. The succeeding indicators were introduced by PAX/TERMAREA, PAX/GATES, AIR/RW, AIR/RWA, AIR/TERMAREA, AIR/GATES, FR/LAND and FR/RW. 10 indicators were accepted as the most important and selected from the current set in the following sequence: AIR/LAND, AIR/RW, PAX/RW, PAX/LAND, AIR/RWA, PAX/AIR, PAX/RWA, AIR/TERMAREA, PAX/GATES and PAX/TERMAREA. AIR/LAND and AIR/RW were submitted as two main indicators. The acronyms are explained as follows: LAND – airport area, RWA – runway length, PAX – the number of passengers, AIR – the number of aircraft take-offs and landings, RW – the number of runways, GATES – the number of gates, FR – the amount of freight served, TERMAREA – the area of passenger terminal, GA – a general aviation market share of airport served aircraft by percentage, INTER – the percentage of international passengers considering all passengers served by airports. After two key productivity indicators were chosen conducting the expert survey, airport productivity was compared applying the DEA method.