The evolution of air transport networks and impacts on shortest travel times between NUTS-3 regions – a case study for intra-European trips originating in Germany

Abstract

The European air transport market has evolved over the past decades at an amazing pace. Key developments include the rise of the low cost carriers (LCCs), orginally at regional and military conversion airports and now also at the larger secondary airports and hubs, the withdrawal of network carriers from non-hub routes and a widely dissapperance of classical regional air services with turboprops. We hypothesize that all these developments have had impacts on travel times between European regions and hence of the achievement of the European Commission’s Flightpath 2050 goal that 90% of trips within Europe can be completed within 4 hours. In this conference presentation, we present a methodology to analyse shortest car and air travel times including a combination of both modes for trips between European regions. We then apply our model to three test cases for travel from Germany to Europe on the level of NUTS-3 regions (districts and larger cities) in order to address the following questions: First, we assess for which region pairs and distances combinations of car and scheduled air transport offer travel time savings over trips by car only. Second, we evaluate how the evolution of the European air transport network has changed shortest travel times for trips from each German NUTS-3 region to Europe between 2000 and 2017. Third, we analyse to what extent full interlining between any airline - including low cost carriers - could help to reduce shortest travel times. The latter topic is related to the current trend of low cost carriers offering transfer connections and/or acting as feeders for traditional network airlines.