Management of airports in extreme winter conditions—some lessons from analysing the efficiency of Norwegian airports

Abstract

Managing airports' winter operations has become a very important subject in recent years. Snow and ice have led to major difficulties and flight disruptions at key European hubs and subsequently to losses of revenue and reputation for the aviation industry. With substantially less funds available at regional airports, the management of these entities in often much harsher winter conditions is an even greater challenge. By applying bootstrapped two-stage DEA models to Norwegian airports, we find that regional airports perform on average not worse than the prime example of Oslo airport. Although technical efficiency is often relatively poor (particularly when accounting for costs), the size of remote airports appears not to be a major problem as for many of the small airports we find very little diseconomies of scale. Our results suggest further that good management practices, appropriate training and an enhanced predictability of environment factors can overcome severe winter conditions and can lead to efficient airport management.