Estimating the Impact of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks on the US Air Transport Passenger Demand Using Intervention Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of September 11 terrorist attacks on the US air transport passenger demand. The article focuses on how soon and to what extent passenger traffic recovery will emerge from the September 11 terrorist attacks. After selecting ARIMA (0,1,1)(0,1,1)12 as the most appropriate model, the intervention model estimates that the total impact amounts to a demand decrease of approximately 67,432,000 within first 9 months. The impact of the intervention continues to drop for the rest of the periods but the decreasing level is getting smaller. Overall, therefore, it seems that the terrorist attacks appear to have a short-term impact on air transport passenger demand. In contrast, in the long term, there are no strong impacts on air transport passenger demand. It is meaningful to evaluate whether the US air transport industry, in terms of passenger demand, has rebounded from the crisis. This study deals with how to manage tourism and travel demand policy in case of future interventions and provides insights to policy makers in the tourism and travel industry to respond to the unexpected exogenous shocks.