Airport Size Research Articles

An Analysis of EIA Report of the Second International Airport Project, Nepal

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a planning tool which enables decision makers to accept environmentally friendly projects and reject environment damaging projects or their certain components. EIA has been mandatory in Nepal since the enactment of Environment Protection Act in 1997. Usually in Nepal, EIA is done for a project late in the project cycle after many important decisions on design and locations have already been made. While in case of government sponsored projects, EIA has remained as ‘pro forma’ compliance with government’s legal requirements. This paper analyses outputs of approved EIA of a mega infrastructure project “Second International Airport Project” which government wants to implement despite of protests by conservationists, and environmental and social activists. There are technocratic problems in EIA Report such as informational weaknesses, insufficient analysis of impacts, and inadequately proposed mitigations measures. It indicates political influence on EIA. This paper suggests making policy decision on size and nature of an international airport and its facilities, alternative locations avoiding ecologically sensitive area, and source of funding. It proposes to conduct a comprehensive Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) complying with national and international environmental and social safeguards, before making any decision to fell trees.

Integrated stochastic life cycle benefit cost analysis of hydronically-heated apron pavement system

Transportation infrastructure and operations are greatly impacted by ice and snow, adding enormous costs to the American economy. Because of their sustainability benefits, heated-pavement systems (HPS) continue to gain attention as a potential alternative to conventional snow removal operations, and the main goal of this paper is to assess the economic feasibility of hydronically-heated pavements systems (HHPS), one type of heated pavements, for use at apron areas of commercial airports. Both benefits and expenses associated with use of HHPS for snow and ice removal were identified and quantified in monetary terms using a stochastic economic analysis method, and a sensitivity analysis approach was used to determine particular variables that significantly influence overall economic viability of HHPS. The findings suggest that, despite high capital costs, HHPS use at airports might be economically feasible. The results from the sensitivity analysis indicate that airport size, in the context of number of aircraft operations, strongly affects the benefit-cost ratio of HHPS use.

Comparative analysis of route selection behaviors between full-service and low-cost airlines

In order to study the similarities and differences between the route selection strategies of full-service and low-cost airlines, Spring Airlines and Eastern Airlines are the representatives of low-cost and full-service airlines respectively, and based on the actual operation data of Spring Airlines and Eastern Airlines routes in the past seven years, the panel-probit model is used to investigate the impact of route characteristics, airport characteristics, characteristics of competing airlines, and the characteristics of airlines on the route selection behaviors of full-service and low-cost airlines. The results show that the route HHI, time slot control airport, airport size and number of competitors have a significant impact on the route decision of the Eastern Airlines, while the time slot control airport, airport HHI and serviced airports have a significant impact on the route decision of the Spring Airlines. Finally, based on the empirical results, the similarities and differences between the decision of Eastern Airlines and Spring Airlines routes are summarized, which provides a theoretical basis for the decision-making of full-service and low-cost airlines.

Weather Impact on Airport Performance

Weather events have a significant impact on airport performance and cause delayed operations if the airport capacity is constrained. We provide quantification of the individual airport performance with regards to an aggregated weather-performance metric. Specific weather phenomena are categorized by the air traffic management airport performance weather algorithm, which aims to quantify weather conditions at airports based on aviation routine meteorological reports. Our results are computed from a data set of 20.5 million European flights of 2013 and local weather data. A methodology is presented to evaluate the impact of weather events on the airport performance and to select the appropriate threshold for significant weather conditions. To provide an efficient method to capture the impact of weather, we modelled departing and arrival delays with probability distributions, which depend on airport size and meteorological impacts. These derived airport performance scores could be used in comprehensive air traffic network simulations to evaluate the network impact caused by weather induced local performance deterioration.

Modeling Airport Business Risks, Enplanement Volatility, and Valuation of Flexibility Options in Airport Expansion Projects

Airport capital improvement programs involve considerable flexibility in investment timing and engineering design. Even though the valuation of flexibility options may depend on several factors, the volatility of future airport activity levels, which largely defines the business risk for airport operators, makes up the focus of the present paper. As such, the paper proposes a model that can be used to value two types of flexibility options common in airport expansion projects. The first type of option—flexibility in investment timing decisions—creates value by conditioning capacity expansion decisions on trends in airport activity levels. The second, flexibility in engineering design, permits operators to influence their demand composition and to reconfigure airport facilities if their business environment changes unfavorably. A Monte Carlo simulation example also demonstrates the application of the proposed valuation model. The results show that flexibility options add economic value by reducing downside exposures and by providing the ability to increase capacity if enplanements stay on a rising trajectory. Moreover, the paper provides a comparison of enplanement growth rates by airport size for the largest 140 U.S. airports from 1990 to 2016. The analysis shows that medium airports may be uniquely positioned to benefit the most from flexible design approaches. For these airports, results imply higher exposures to excess capacity risks because of the increased persistence of losses, despite the higher year-on-year volatility of small airports.

Airport Size and Urban Growth

This paper studies how airports affect economic growth in US metropolitan areas. The main finding is that airport size has a positive effect on local employment, with an elasticity of 0.04. The effect appears to be mostly due to a positive effect on services employment and to be concentrated in parts of the metropolitan area nearer the airport. To further understand how an airport affects the local economy, the effects on several other variables are estimated. Airport size is found to have positive effects on the number of firms, the population size, the rate of employment, and GDP in the local area. The magnitudes of the effects on population and employment suggest that airport expansion creates jobs for both existing residents and migrants to the area. The estimation uses a novel technique to identify the effects of airport infrastructure. It applies instruments for changes in airport size that are calculated from overall changes in air traffic in a set of categories: the airlines, the types of aircraft, or the distances flown. The technique could be adapted to study the effects of other types of infrastructure.

Measuring and Explaining Airport Efficiency and Sustainability: Evidence from Italy

From an environmental point of view, it is widely recognized in economic literature that an efficient management of regional airports produces positive effects both for congestion reduction in the larger airports and for better use of existing infrastructures. Regional airports generally suffer from economic vulnerabilities because of scarcity of traffic volume; besides, their small catchment areas often determine low cash flow levels. As a result, significant problems of economic sustainability arise. In this context, airport infrastructure providers have the incentive to hide failures in their strategic decisions, justifying the low share of cost recovery through market characteristics. By means of the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) method this paper analyses overall technical, pure technical, and scale efficiency of 34 Italian airports in the period 2006–2016 in order to investigate how a number of factors impact on the efficiency and economic sustainability of regional airports. Our findings reveal that airport size, presence of low-cost carriers and cargo traffic have a significant influence on the technical and scale efficiency of Italian airports. In other words, air transport privatization and deregulation can positively affect regional airport efficiency and sustainability. This is to say that the market mechanism is a useful tool in achieving regional airport sustainability even if the empirical analysis of the effects of privatization and deregulation is recommended for evaluating such political programs.

The commercial performance of global airports

Revenues from non-aeronautical business have received increasing attention from airports seeking to enhance their profitability. This study analyzes the commercial performance of global airports using a panel dataset of 75 airports in 30 countries. Applying pooled OLS, random effects and 3SLS estimation frameworks, we identify the main drivers of financial performance. Our results are in line with the existing literature. The share of international passengers, the size of the commercial area as well as airport size and the mix and intra-terminal location of retail space are found to be significant determinants. The latter finding suggests the presence of economies of scale in generating higher commercial revenue and ensuring profitability for an airport's non-aeronautical operations. Staterun and partially privatized airports appear to retain a significantly smaller share of concession sales than their privatized counterparts. Regarding the retail mix, a higher share of food and beverage outlets appears to increase the revenue share retained by the airport while a higher percentage of outlets located airside rather than landside depresses commercial revenues.

Hydrant refueling system as an optimisation of aircraft refuelling

Summary. At large international airports, aircraft can be refuelled either by fuel trucks or using dedicated underground pipeline systems. The latter, hydrant refuelling, is considered to be an optimal fuelling method as it increases safety, shortens the aircraft turnaround time and cuts the overall costs. However, at smaller airports, implementation of this system can lead to high investment costs. Thus, the paper discusses the airport size from which this system may be efficient to implement. Various definitions of term “airport size” are assessed. Based on data collection, the hydrant system model is created within the paper. As a result, methodology for assessing the suitability of hydrant system implementation is set. This methodology can be used at every airport using three simple inputs.

Operational and financial performance of Italian airport companies: A dynamic graphical model

This paper provides evidence on the relationship within a set of financial and operational indicators for Italian airports over 2008–2014. The limited sample size of national and regional airports suggests to apply the penalised RCON(V,E) model, which falls within the class of Gaussian graphical models. It provides both estimate and easy way to visualise conditional independence structures of the variables. Moreover, it is particularly suitable for handling longitudinal data where small number of units and huge number of variables have been collected. Findings highlight that a qualified concept of size matters in determining good financial performance. Specifically, increasing jointly the number of movements with flights that would attract a high number of passengers may improve both sales profitability and revenues generated by the company's assets. Results suggests that the effect of low cost carrier has been heterogeneous throughout the sample, which may suggest new opportunities to expand the business in order to intercept the consumer surplus of this category of travellers.

Objective Airport Warnings over Small Areas Using NLDN Cloud and Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Data

AbstractLightning can have a significant impact on ground-crew and other operations at airports, resulting in a cascade of delays beyond the immediate locations. Measures of these impacts have not been presented previously in a comprehensive approach for a variety of factors. Prior approaches typically used lightning data within outer observation radii of varying sizes to anticipate cloud-to-ground (CG) flashes in a smaller inner warning area such as an airport. The goal of this paper is to address issues related to the balance between safety and the efficiency of lightning warnings for such situations. The first of two topics addressed in this study is to examine the value of adding cloud pulses to CG strokes. The detection efficiency of the U.S. NLDN for cloud pulses increased to about 50% by late summer 2013, so NLDN data during the entire 2014 summer are considered at 10 locations. Verification is performed for the occurrence of NLDN-detected CG strokes at the airports. Cloud pulses were found to improve the 2-min probability of detection by 13% compared with CG strokes only. The second topic of the study is the reduction of the inner warning area from the size of an entire airport to a small section of the airport, from a radius of 4.8 to 0.5 km. The probability of detection with a 2-min lead time increases to over 0.90 for the smaller area, while the false alarm ratio also increases substantially when CGs plus cloud pulses are included.

Airport mobile internet an innovation

This paper studies the adoption of mobile Internet by airports. Using a new theoretical model, the study tests whether early adopters of mobile Internet for airports can be considered real innovators. Seventy-five international airports from four different geographical areas and of three different sizes are analyzed. The paper complements the analysis with an additional innovation adoption, the PC-Website, and two dimensions are analyzed: the time of adoption and the degree of maturation. Our findings show that there are four real innovator airports: London Heathrow, London Stansted, Amsterdam Schiphol and Copenhagen. Airport innovation is found to be related to geographical location and commercial revenue rather than to airport size. The four real innovator airports iPhone apps are used as case studies to identity best practices for the delivery of airport mobile services.

The “effect procargo” on technical and scale efficiency at airports: The case of Spanish airports (2009–2011)

This paper studies the “effect procargo” (or effect of the proportion of cargo traffic relative to total traffic) on technical and scale efficiency at airports. To this end, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology, a comparative technical efficiency analysis is developed for 35 Spanish airports over the 2009 to 2011 period. In a second stage, using Tobit regression, we analysed the effects of airport size, low-cost carrier (LCC) presence, and cargo traffic on efficiency. The results suggest that cargo traffic has a positive impact on the technical and scale efficiency of Spanish airport operations. Airports with a higher share of cargo traffic are expected to have higher overall technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency, in comparison to airports with a lower share.

Airport Capability, Aviation Activity and Economic Activity at General Aviation Airports

Previous research has established support for the overall premise that there are relationships between investments in airport infrastructure and economic activity. The nature of the investment and resulting increased capabilities seem to act in specific ways that are as yet materially unexplained. In addition, the role of how increased capabilities support (or make possible) increased activity at the airport, and how increased activity in general leads to economic outcomes are also ripe for additional clarification. The purpose of this investigation is to shed light on the relationships between airport capabilities, aviation activity at the airport, and the economic activity generated for the community served by the airport. In this study we have demonstrated that strong, significant positive relationships exist between Airport Capabilities (Accessibility and Infrastructure), Airport Size (Class), Airport Activity, and Economic Activity. Practical, managerial inferences can also be drawn. First, it is not unreasonable to expect that investment (public or private) in improved airport capability does indeed stimulate increased economic activity directly, and indirectly by increasing the number and importance of activities taking place at the airport. It is anticipated that the results of this and related future research efforts can better inform public policy decisions in general aviation.

Air transport liberalisation and airport dependency: developing a composite index

Air transport liberalisation in Europe has produced some major changes to the networks operated by airlines and the services available at airports. Within this context the degree of airport dependency in terms of market, spatial and temporal concentration is important to know from an economic geography and risk management perspective. A composite index called the Airport Dependency Index (ADI) is developed to measure airport dependency based on the concept of the relative Gini coefficient. Liberalisation has had varying impacts depending on the size and type of airport and so a comparison is made of the degree of dependency at a large sample of European airports using the ADI. The ADI has the potential to provide insight on the sustainability and worthiness of financing airport projects, and on whether airports should diversify further their activities by investing in the growth and expansion of their network.

Total factor productivity analysis of the UK airport industry: A Hicks-Moorsteen index method

This study examines the total factor productivity (TFP) change of the UK airport industry from 2001 to 2009 using a Hicks-Moorsteen index method. The results show that the industry experienced an average annual growth in TFP of 0.32 per cent with efficiency change being the main contributor to the TFP growth. We find that private UK airports enjoy slightly higher TFP growth than those in public or mixed ownership. Regulation and airport size are found to have statistically significant effects on the airport productivity level.

Airport route development: A survey of current practice

To develop air services and in many cases tourism flows, airports focus their marketing effort on airlines through a process known as route development. Whilst route development is a well-known concept within the airport industry it has received limited attention in academic or industry literature. As a result little knowledge is shared about why airports use route development, what are the most common methods and what is the general level of involvement. To fill the gap, this paper investigates airport route development practice using an online survey of 124 airports worldwide. Findings show that the vast majority of airports are actively involved in route development for a range of objectives and that the process and level of involvement is extensive, although this often depends on airport size, location or ownership. Results are particularly relevant to airports that are less advanced in route development activities and also those seeking to debate route and tourism development strategies with stakeholders.

Small is beautiful? The impact of economic crisis, low cost carriers, and size on efficiency in Spanish airports (2009–2011)

This paper carries out a comparative technical efficiency analysis of 35 Spanish airports using panel data for 2009–2011 with a data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology. The results suggest that airport size has a positive impact on the technical and scale efficiency and that the presence of low cost carriers has positively affected the scale efficiency of the airports where they operate. The results also show that during the present economic crisis Spanish airports have experienced a dramatic productivity regress which is due to the reduction of their technological change component.

An analysis of activity scheduling behavior of airport travelers

A nested logit model is presented that can be used to predict the activity pattern of travelers inside an airport based on their socio-demographical characteristics (e.g. gender, age), group size, and travel related information (e.g. number of bags, airport size, and total available time). The availability of such a model enhances representation of the behavior dynamics when simulating airport pedestrian traffic. An internet-based revealed preference survey was used to collect data from persons that visit airports including both travelers and non-travelers. The survey focused on the agenda of subjects’ most recent airport trip, the frequency and attitude concerning certain types of activities they performed inside the airport, and the socio-demographic characteristics of each respondent. Three possible nested logit model structures are analyzed and one has been identified as a plausible and statistically acceptable nested structure. Also, the empirical results demonstrate the applicability of a nested logit model for use in identifying travelers’ activity patterns in an airport.

Efficiency of Italian and Norwegian airports: A matter of management or of the level of competition in remote regions?

Benchmarking has proven to be a useful tool with which to compare and evaluate the performance of airports but sometimes the determinants of performance are not investigated or accurately interpreted. This paper analyses the cost efficiency of 35 Italian and 46 Norwegian airports over time. We apply a two-stage DEA approach, with truncated regression models in the second stage to evaluate the role of competition as a key determinant of the first stage efficiency scores. For that reason we initially use a separate model to measure the level of competition at the relevant airports both from other airports and from surface transport. We show that particularly for regional and small airports, it is the level of competition that impacts on the airport’s efficiency. Military use/ownership and size of airports also have a positive impact on efficiency although diseconomies of scale matter when infrastructure is taken into account. Finally, when regressed separately, we find that Italian airports that are managed through a concession have higher efficiency scores than those with partial and temporary partial concessions.