Scientific investigations in air transport about Brazil: A bibliometric review

Abstract

Brazil has a significant contribution in air transport worldwide, both for the importance of this mode for people to move and for the size of its airport infrastructure. Many studies have been carried out in Brazil on different areas of research in air transport, but none of them focus on identifying main areas of research and their gaps. This article aims to survey the areas of research in which there is the greatest amount of knowledge and those lines where there are gaps to fill. For this purpose, an analysis of the articles in both national and international journals were performed, besides proceedings of conferences on related topics. In the first case, national journals has been carried out for the last twelve years, using the Sucupira Platform of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq as a reference, identifying the Journal of Transport Literature and Transportes. For the international references, five international journals of high impact were verified. Papers were also raised in the proceedings of the last three years in the Conference of Research and Education in Transportation (ANPET) and in the Symposium in Air Transport (SITRAER) for 2019. The search filters were delimited by keywords in common use in journals. The classification of areas of knowledge was defined based on international literature, with four areas defined: Airline, Airports, Aircraft and Air Navigation. The following lines of research were also defined: Mobility, Safety, Sustainability, Industry/services, Economy, Policies, Environment and Social Development. The results show that 86% of the studies focused on research in the areas of Airlines and Airports, of which, of this total, more than 47% have Economics as their research line; the remaining 14% dealt with Aircraft and Air Navigation. Cargo transportation corresponds to only 3% of publications. The results showed gaps in the lines of research in Mobility, Social Development, Environment and Sustainability; in addition, security research focuses on the airport environment, with no publication in airlines. Cargo transportation needs to be further studied, especially when modal integration logistics is a necessity in a globalized world.