Getting closer to your destination: The role of available surface connections on the supply of low-cost carriers in secondary European tourist airports

Abstract

Secondary airports have played a key role in the development of both low-cost carriers and the tourism industry in recent decades. Although they are usually further from tourists' main destination/origin, low-cost carriers take advantage of lower fares to exploit tourists' lower time valuation. Nonetheless, efficient surface commuting is a key attribute of airport accessibility and a source of relative attractiveness in multi-airport systems. Low-cost airlines have recently changed their strategic behavior by opting to spread their presence at primary airports, which represents a challenge for secondary airports that have both declining traffic and high dependency on low-cost carriers. In this paper we evaluate the role of private and public transportation commuting time efficiency in the quarterly market share of secondary airports for a sample of European multi-airport systems between 2018 and 2021. Our results show that relative commuting efficiency– whether public or private –is a determinant of traffic distribution in multi-airport systems. Public authorities might be interested in improving secondary airports' accessibility when other airport policies are constrained, either to reverse their current adverse trend or to efficiently utilize existing capacity in systems with highly congested primary airports.