Annual Trips Research Articles

The perfect synergy: Alumni, donors, students, employers — A case study in Silicon Valley

This is a case study about overcoming internal institutional silos to develop a new market for alumni engagement, donor cultivation, and student and alumni job opportunities. Simon Fraser University (SFU) was unknown in the Bay Area until three key areas of the university banded together to form the Bay Area Working Group — a cross-functional team to develop a comprehensive strategy for that region. The paper discusses specific strategies that were developed to address the following goals: (1) increasing the number of activities delivered in the region, while maximising strategic outcomes for broader institutional needs, (2) coordinating a single delegation to participate in one or two annual trips to the region, (3) increasing the number of organisations that hired co-op students by using alumni as door openers, (4) integrating current students into alumni-based activities in the region, (5) increasing university pride and loyalty held by alumni in the region, and (6) increasing recognition and acknowledgment of the SFU brand. Five years later, SFU is a leader in the region with record levels of alumni engagement, an increase in the number of financial gifts being realised, significant growth in the number of student co-op positions being posted, and the likes of Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple recruiting on an active basis on campus. A list of recommendations are provided to guide others who are keen to both enhance the outcomes realised in existing areas and expand activities into new markets.

Cost analysis and barriers to implementing and sustaining an international surgical resident rotation: a retrospective review

BackgroundThe overwhelming need and interest in global surgery has led to increasing numbers of international surgery resident rotations. Despite the validity of global surgical education, financial and logistical barriers remain when implementing these international rotations. The Mount Sinai Department of Surgery, New York, USA, established an international resident rotation in 2005. Here, we describe some of the costs and barriers to establishing and maintaining a global surgery rotation with the aim of providing a guideline for academic institutions interested in building an international rotation. MethodsThis study is a retrospective review of the international rotation with the Hospital Jose Maria Cabral y Báez (Cabral) in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The exchange programme is an opportunity for two resident doctors from Dominican Republic to join Mount Sinai third year residents in a 1-month surgical rotation. We reviewed data collected from budgets, financial investments, resident and programme director experiences, and formal agreements between the two institutions. FindingsWith the Mount Sinai funding, there have been three residents from the Dominican Republic who have completed an exchange rotation at the Mount Sinai Hospital. An optimum international site requires a balanced alliance between the US academic institution and the international site. The Cabral and Mount Sinai collaborative partnership allows residents from both institutions to benefit from the exchange of experiences and surgical practices. Site selection is contingent on: hospital infrastructure (eg, operative variety and volume, faculty oversight); suitable living accommodations that allow personal safety, access to food, running water, electricity, and an internet connection; and overcoming language barriers. Successful implementation requires a time commitment from staff at both institutions. The monthly operational cost of this programme is US$3530, with 37% for visiting resident accommodation, 30% for transport, 20% for visiting resident expenses, and 13% for health and communication expenses. The time required by the US programme director includes an annual trip to the international rotation site and approximately 100 h per year, which includes monthly orientations and debriefings, and research. Finally, this programme requires adherence to Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and Residency Review Committee guidelines. InterpretationGlobal academic surgery combines surgery with education, clinical service, research, and advocacy in resource-limited settings. Mitigation of logistical barriers and addressing financial costs allows for successful global academic surgery programmes. FundingNone

Pediatric ocular disease in an ophthalmic surgical mission trip to belize: A 7-year review

Purpose: The purpose is to identify the various causes of ocular disease and surgical interventions undertaken in children (0–18 years of age) seen during an annual ophthalmic surgical trip to Belize. Methods: A retrospective, cross-sectional review of records from seven annual surgical trips conducted by the World Pediatric Project providing pediatric ophthalmologic clinical and surgical care to Belize from 2013 to 2019 was performed. Results: The charts of 313 patients who received care during the surgical mission trips were examined. From these 313 patients, there were 545 independent clinical encounters, yielding 405 diagnoses. Patients aged 6–10 years were most commonly seen (32.1%) followed by those 2–5 years old (28.1%). The most common pathophysiology seen was strabismus/ocular motility disorder (151 diagnoses; 37.4%), followed by refractive issues (69 diagnoses; 17.1%), eyelids and/or lacrimal system disorders (53 diagnoses; 13.1%), disorders of the retina/vitreous (30 diagnoses; 7.4%), lens abnormalities/cataract (28 diagnoses; 6.9%), amblyopia (23 diagnoses; 5.7%), disorders of the cornea/conjunctiva (23 diagnoses; 5.7%), trauma (13 cases; 3.2%), conditions affecting the globe/orbit (7 diagnoses; 1.7%), other (6 diagnoses; 1.5%), and glaucoma (1 diagnoses, 0.2%). Conclusion: This study identified the most frequently diagnosed ocular conditions encountered during annual surgical mission trips to Belize. The most prevalent pathophysiology encountered was strabismus/ocular motility disorders, followed by refractive issues. The most common refractive issues encountered were myopia and astigmatism. This is the first study detailing pediatric ocular disease in Belize.

Stevens’s Epistolary Surrogates

Stevens’s Epistolary Surrogates George S. Lensing FROM HIS BOYHOOD in Reading, Pennsylvania, to his college years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to his early adulthood in New York, and then through almost forty years at his more permanent home in Hartford, Connecticut, the life of Wallace Stevens was largely sedentary and increasingly solitary. Over the course of his life, his travels were few. After completing law school he made a seven-week fishing and hunting trip to Canada, and early in his career at The Hartford he made trips to the Midwest and annual trips by train from Hartford through the American South to Florida. There was a trip by boat with his wife through the Panama Canal and up the Pacific Coast to California, and—back in Hartford—occasional day trips by train into New York. With his wife and daughter, Stevens vacationed a few times at various resorts and, later, made brief return visits to Reading. But his greater and lifelong wish to visit Europe never materialized, even though later in life there were opportunities and invitations to do so. Even at home he never owned an automobile or learned to drive one. His daily trip of two miles from his home to the office and then home again was made by foot. At the same time, and with very few exceptions, there were no guests in the Stevens home in Hartford where he lived with his wife, Elsie, and his daughter, Holly. And even within that home, husband and wife lived for the most part independently. As his daughter said of him, “one might say that my father lived alone” (H. Stevens 4). I mention all this only because we know from the poems themselves that Stevens was a passionate man of strong desires and needs, which were especially prevalent in the various poems of spring and summer. Toward the end of his life, Stevens confessed in a letter to Barbara Church, “Yet I have never liked going to the places to which other people go or doing the things they do. . . . The truth is that one gets out of contact with people during the summer and feels the immense need . . . of people for other people, a thing that has been in my thoughts for a long time, in one form or another” (L 759). The poems themselves disclose a strong and consistent interest in and use of foreign lands, customs, and people. In Bart Eeckhout and Edward Ragg’s collection of essays called Wallace Stevens across the Atlantic, my own contribution is entitled “‘The Switzerland of the Mind’: Stevens’ Invention of Europe.” In spite of his largely sedentary [End Page 173] and solitary life, one of the ways that Stevens sustained these desires for the foreign and the poems that were rooted in them was through his correspondence, perhaps the chief means. In thinking about the importance of his letters for both Stevens the man and Stevens the poet, I found one question that kept returning. From where and what does the need, even passion, for the company of some of his correspondents derive within the poet himself? What exactly were the lacunae and absences in his own life that were filled, or at least partially filled, or even attempted to be filled, by letters and postcards? I came to the conclusion that Stevens often invented in his letters what I am calling selected surrogates, who, by his own epistolary constructions, transported and transformed the exterior world in order to satisfy his personal needs and provide him with gratifications and, in many such instances, to become the foundation for poems that followed, as I hope to demonstrate. The letters themselves constitute a kind of surrogacy—imagined recipients in the absence of their immediate physical presence. A similar act of the imagination comes into play when the addressee constructs a personality and presence founded solely upon the content and style of the letter itself. If the recipient is an acquaintance or friend, the letter writer’s memories of that person hover in the background. Of course, a letter’s artificial monologue substitutes for the more easy exchange of live, dynamic, and immediate conversation: here the discourse is...

Епископ Мефодий Кампанский и практика паломничества в Святую Землю из Русского Зарубежья: (пере)изобретение традиции

The paper deals with the Russian émigrés’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land after the Second World War. The author analyzes the phenomenon of the restoration of group pilgrimages as a process of reinventing the pilgrimage tradition first developed mainly in the peasant milieu at the turn of the twentieth century. The annual trips from France organized by Bishop Methodian Kulman served as the basis for the new pilgrimage movement and the formation of a new community of “co-pilgrims”, uniting Russian Orthodox emigrants from all over the world. Perceived as a romantic ideal, the old peasant pilgrimage to Palestine became a source of new meanings for pilgrims in the second half of the 20th century. The author explores the process of gradual ritualization and formalization of the trips; the reconstruction of the Russian mental map of the Holy Land; the use of the pilgrimage as a way to cope with longing for the lost homeland and seeking authenticity by reproducing institutions of the past. The pilgrimage, interpreted as a spiritual ideal, became one of the ways to consolidate the Russian emigration.

ВШАНУВАННЯ ПАМ’ЯТІ ГЕРОЇВ НАЦІОНАЛЬНО-ВИЗВОЛЬНИХ ЗМАГАНЬ ПІД ЧАС ЗЕЛЕНИХ СВЯТ У ГАЛИЧИНІ (20-ті – 30-ті рр. ХХ ст.)

У статті на основі широкого кола джерел проаналізовано процес вшанування пам’яті героїв національно-визвольних змагань 1914–1921 рр. під час Зелених свят (Трійці) у Галичині (20-ті – 30-ті рр. ХХ ст.). Поминальні заходи включали урочисті богослужіння за участю членів усіх громадських това- риств, щорічні походи до місць бойової слави (г. Маківка, г. Лисоня), встановлення пам’ятників та меморіальних таблиць. У міжвоєнний період масового характеру набуло також насипання символічних могил на честь полеглих бійців. Відзначено, що такі акції впливали на формування національної свідо- мості, викликали патріотичне піднесення і сприяли гуртуванню молоді навколо ідеї національно- визвольної боротьби.

Willingness-to-pay for snowmobile recreation: travel cost method models with and without post-season resurvey of trip count

ABSTRACTAnnual willingness-to-pay (WTP) for snowmobile recreation in Idaho is estimated using the travel cost method (TCM). On-site snow conditions are important and erratic, thus we collect two measures of the annual trip count, an in-season survey of the expected count, and a post-season survey of the actual count. Two variants of the TCM model are estimated. Using the post-season actual trip count data and the ‘traditional’ TCM model, WTP increases from $41 to $91 per person per trip as the fraction of the wage rate that is used to value the opportunity cost of travel time is increased from 1/4 to one. Using the preferred short-run decision TCM model, WTP increases from $53 to $194 as the snowmobiler ratings of off-trail snow conditions vary from worst to best. WTP estimates using the in-season expected trip count data and the traditional TCM model are much higher (triple) than those found using the post-season actual trip count data, and the confidence intervals are much larger.

Health care in Amazon communities for education and awareness about health in low resource settings

Abstract Background Brazil has an extensive area and social differences. Indigenous peoples and other minorities still have great difficulty in accessing health. Although increase in the number of medical graduates, there has been a low number of professionals joining the jobs offered in the remote areas. Objectives: The objective of this project is to sensitize health students to the importance of meeting the health demands of the populations in remote areas and low resource settings through practical experience in the care of the indigenous communities of the Amazon region supervised by teachers. Results The Mandic Health Boat team consists of about 40 to 50 members: 8-10 physicians (epidemiologist, pediatrician, general practitioner, gynecology, dermatology and ophthalmology), nurses, dental surgeons, 16 medical graduates , 6 dentistry graduates, 1 dental technician and 1 optician. The trips are 10 days long and are organized in integration with the local population and the health district so that the tasks are integrated into the routines of health actions. To date, the project has already carried out two expeditions and another is scheduled in June 2019. In the last one, 1619 medical consultations were performed and 639 dental consultations were donated 574 glasses and performed 97 surgeries for pterygium excision. Conclusions Through this program it was possible to put the academics in contact with the reality of the indigenous communities and to raise awareness of the difficulties of these original peoples. It was also possible to provide health education and medical and dental care, with spotlight to dental prostheses and glasses, that are particularly difficult to access because they require materials and equipment that are unavailable in the forest. This experience provides health to the original populations and favors the students’ awareness to social problems, as well as being an innovative scenario for the learning process in the health area. Key messages This experience provides health to the original populations and favors the students’ awareness to social problems, as well as being an innovative scenario for the learning process in the health area. The planning of the expeditions with the community leaderships and the local health authorities allow the integration of the actions realized through annual trips to the routines of the health care.

Prehistoric Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: Importation of meat and maize

In a recent paper, Benson and Grimstead (2019) determined that only minimal amounts of maize could have been grown in Chaco Canyon due to its aridity, short growing season, and frequent summer flooding of the valley floor. In this paper it is shown that deer and rabbit densities within semiarid regions such as the Canyon are such that 2300 Canyon residents would eliminate essentially all small and large mammals within a year. This implies that food (meat and maize) must have been imported from one or more outlying areas to feed the Canyon's residential population. This would have entailed ~18,000 annual trips to the Canyon by porters carrying 45 kg. Although some Sr-isotope data on archaeofauna and maize recovered from Chaco match Sr-isotope values of soil extracts collected in the Canyon (Benson, 2010, 2012; Grimstead et al., 2016), the Canyon's low mammal densities and poor agricultural potential led to a search for other food-source areas with matching Sr-isotope ranges. New isotopic data indicated that the Chuska mountain region appears to be a primary source of these materials. However, there are also a number of other high-elevation relatively wet regions on the periphery of the San Juan Basin with soils having Sr-isotope values that match Chaco Canyon archaeofaunal values, especially values obtained on deer.

Estimation of fish consumption rates based on a creel angler survey of an urban river in New Jersey, USA

A one-year angler intercept survey was conducted on the lower 17 miles of the Passaic River, an urban industrialized river that flows through Newark, New Jersey. The purpose of the survey was to collect data about anglers’ behaviors and fish consumption habits in order to calculate exposure factors for a human health risk assessment of the Study Area. This paper focuses on estimating site-specific fish consumption rates for LPRSA anglers that consume their catch. The study design included on-site interviews and counts (angler enumeration). Forty survey locations were included in the stratified random sampling plan; interviews were conducted on 136 days and counts on 164 days. After matching intercepts with the same angler, a total of 294 anglers were interviewed, of which 25 reported consuming their catch. LPRSA fishing trips ranged from 2 to nearly 50 annual trips for anglers who reported consuming their catch. Species caught and reported to be consumed included carp, catfish, white perch, smallmouth bass, and eel. The estimated mean and 90th percentile consumption rates for the population of consuming anglers are 5.0 and 8.8 g/day, respectively. Based on sensitivity analyses, the 90th percentile fish consumption rates range from approximately 4 to 18 g/day.

Editorial: conference culture and the benefits of connection

Editorial: conference culture and the benefits of connection

Visiting Professorship in Jacksonville—Leo and Hilary Cheng: Life-saving Surgeries on the Waves: March, 2018

“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.” —Albert Schweitzer Alsatian theologian, organist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, & physician Dr. Leo H-H Cheng and his wife Hilary Cheng burned a fire in our hearts. Fire of the great need to help others in any possible way. And we, as the surgeons, can do this not only on the land in our surgical departments and hospitals, but on the waves as well. During the annual trips, Dr. Cheng works on board the world’s largest nongovernmental hospital ship, the Africa Mercy [1]. Mercy Ships are the places in which the physicians and nurses from different counties are giving their best to the poorest people on the continent [1]. But Mercy Ships doesn’t just take doctors and nurses – the ship is a small city, with cooks, teachers, receptionists, mechanics, IT specialists, engineers and cleaners [2]. Dr. Cheng performs a lot of the life-saving surgeries in a head and neck area together with colleagues from neighboring specialties. The example of Dr. Leo and Hilary Cheng during their lectureship program in Jacksonville (Fig) gave us so many inspiration to support others around the globe with our surgical skills. And no matter how small or big amount of help each of us can bring into that world. Mercy Ships are the precise places in which our help will bring so many happines for needy patients. “Miraculous work of the Mercy Ships.” —Leo H-H Cheng

Impact of attitude on cumulative mode choices of intercity business travellers in China

Using data from a revealed preference survey conducted in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomeration of China, two sets of latent attitudinal variables, hypothesised to affect cumulative mode choices, were generated through factor analysis. A fractional multinomial logit model was adopted to estimate the allocation of trips across three main intercity modes over the previous year. The results showed that intercity business travellers would use a certain mode more frequently if they considered it to be the most convenient and reliable. In addition, the general attitudinal factors ‘travel utility’ and ‘car affinity’ were found to affect positively the proportions of annual intercity high-speed train trips and car trips, respectively. Business travellers with a fun-oriented attitude were found more likely to take an intercity bus, whereas those under travel pressure or holding an overall positive perception towards intercity travel would use an intercity bus less. Car ownership and city type were also found to be impact factors. Based on the results of the study, attitudinal variables in the full model help to explain the proportions of annual mode trips and some market strategies could be applied to enhance services for intercity business travellers in the YRD urban agglomeration.

Changes in driving patterns of older Australians: Findings from the Candrive/Ozcandrive cohort study

This paper describes changes in driving patterns over a five-year period of drivers aged 75 years and older (Year 1: Male = 68.9%; Age = M = 79.5 years, SD = 3.4 years, Range: 75.0–88.0 years) in the Candrive/Ozcandrive cohort study. Participants completed various functional and health assessments and self-reported driving questionnaires. In-vehicle data-loggers, installed in participants’ own vehicles, also monitored spatio-temporal characteristics of participants’ everyday driving trips. Data for a subset of one hundred and ninety-one Ozcandrive participants from Melbourne, Australia were analysed. Reductions in driving trip distance and frequency were observed over the five years. On average, in Year 1, participants drove 1223 (SD = 502) trips, totalling 8993 (SD = 5169) kilometers annually, decreasing significantly to 1028 trips (SD = 559) trips and 6787 (SD = 4624) kilometers in Year 5. On average, in Year 1, participants’ driving trips were around 7.5 km (SD = 3.2), decreasing in distance significantly to 6.9 km (SD 3.9) in Year 5. Log-normal General Estimating Equation (GEE) modelling was conducted for selected driving exposure measures (annual distance driven, annual trip frequency, trip distance, etc.). Reductions in overall annual distance driven were significantly associated with being female, increasing age, withdrawal from the study for health reasons and lower night-time driving comfort scores (marginally significant). Reductions in annual trip frequency were associated with increasing age and withdrawal from the study for health reasons. Results suggest drivers practiced self-regulation, which may reflect adaption to deterioration in health and functional status.

The aggravation of urban air quality deterioration due to urbanization, transportation and economic development – Panel models with marginal effect analyses across China

In this paper, panel data models are established to examine the impacts of urban construction, transport facilities, and economic development on the urban air quality. Combined with data from different tiers of Chinese cities for two time series, 2010 and 2015, the variable-intercept model (VIM) is used to determine the parameters and significance of each independent variable. The marginal effects of different categories of independent variables (urbanization, transportation and economy) on the urban air quality are also studied with regard to the results of different VIMs. The results show that transportation factors (such as annual passenger trips, bus numbers and taxi numbers) have the most significant effects on the air quality for all the Chinese cities. Moreover, urbanized area and annual gross value of industrial output also have prominent impacts on the air quality across China. In addition, the marginal effects of the air quality index obtained via VIMs with classified local variables reflect that the influences of urbanization, transportation and economy on urban air quality are substantially different among different tiers of cities. Therefore, based on the findings, we propose measures to improve air quality for different tiers of cities, such as rational use of space resources, optimizing transport modes, and encouraging carpooling.

A stochastic power management strategy with skid avoidance for improving energy efficiency of in-wheel motor electric vehicles

In this study, a stochastic power management strategy for in-wheel motor electric vehicles is proposed to reduce the energy consumption and increase the driving range, considering the unpredictable nature of the driving power demand. A stochastic dynamic programming approach, policy iteration algorithm, is used to create an infinite horizon problem formulation to calculate optimal power distribution policies for the vehicle. The developed stochastic dynamic programming strategy distributes the demanded power, Pdem between the front and rear in-wheel motors by considering states of the vehicle, including the vehicle speed and the front and the rear wheels’ slip ratios. In addition, a skid avoidance rule is added to the power management strategy to maintain the wheels’ slip ratios within the desired values. Undesirable slip ratios cause poor brake and traction control performances and therefore should be avoided. The resulting strategy consists of a time-invariant, rule-based controller which is fast enough for real time implementations, and additionally, it is not expensive to be launched since the future power demand is approximated without a need to vehicle communication systems or telemetric capability. A high-fidelity model of an in-wheel motor electric vehicle is developed in the Autonomie/Simulink environment for evaluating the proposed strategy. The simulation results show that the proposed stochastic dynamic programming strategy is more efficient in comparison to some benchmark strategies, such as an equal power distribution and generalized rule-based dynamic programming. The simulation results of different driving scenarios for the considered in-wheel motor electric vehicle show the proposed power management strategy leads to 3% energy consumption reduction in average, at no additional cost. If the resulting energy savings is considered for the total annual trips for the vehicle and also the total number of electric vehicles in the country, the proposed power management strategy has a significant impact.

Probabilistic Estimation of Distribution Network Performance With Respect to Voltage Sags and Interruptions Considering Network Protection Setting—Part I: The Methodology

Nowadays, modern industrial processes are controlled by equipment highly sensitive to voltage sags and interruptions. Although the proposed methods in the literature allow utilities to estimate annual equipment trips due to voltage sags and permanent interruptions, they do not assess explicitly momentary interruptions. This paper proposes a probabilistic methodology that includes the attempts of reclosers to clear nonpermanent faults during the estimation of annual voltage sags and momentary interruptions at each busbar. Furthermore, voltage-tolerance ranges for each type of equipment are taken into account to quantify annual equipment trips due to voltage sags and momentary interruptions for each customer in the distribution network. The results allow the utility to identify a geographic area where sets of customers face high equipment trips during the year. The proposed methodology can be used by utilities to prioritize corrective measures to improve the quality of service to those customers most affected by annual equipment trips.

Key factors to annual investment in public transportation sector: The case of China

In this paper, we establish panel models to examine the relationships between the annual investment in the public transport sector (AIP) and bus network facility scale, and between AIP and the land area for urban roads in different tiers of Chinese cities. The empirical study uses panel data of 160 Chinese cities and a time span over 2000–2015. To capture the characteristics of the panel models, including the individual effects, variable intercepts, and coefficient values, different regression functions are adopted for the relevant analysis. As for these regression functions, seven explanatory variables are selected. These variables are: the length of operated bus transit routes (LR), the total number of annual passengers trips (PT), the land area for urban roads (LA), the density of urban road networks (ND), the resident population (POP), the gross domestic production (GDP), and the value-added tax (TAX). On the other hand, the explained variable in these regression models is the AIP of each city. According to model results, it is found that AIP is positively related to LR and GDP, and negatively to PT, LA, and TAX. However, the effects of ND and POP are negative on the increase of AIPs of mega-cities and medium-size cities. It could also be found that the increase in bus infrastructure investment caused by the expansion of land area for urban roads is not negligible, especially in small cities. When the LR changes greatly, LA should be considered as a more stable factor to predict the AIP in mega-cities. Based on the findings, related implications for the policy-making on annual budget allocations for different tiers of cities are listed.

Oh no! My annual trip to the eye clinic

Based on reports from patients, Daniel Williams offers a patient-centred view of a visit to an eye clinic.

Intercity travel analysis for a university township with emphasis on air travel

Abstract Intercity travel is crucial to the economic development of any nation with air travel demand modeling being a key component in transportation planning. For this study, the university township of IIT Bombay in Mumbai, India is considered to capture the travel choice behaviour of its residents comprising of students, faculty and staff, when traveling to other cities. The prime areas of analysis are determining trip generations based on socioeconomic characteristics of the travelers using regression analysis, understanding mode choice by looking into travel decisions made as a function of both mode and income characteristics using utility theory, and to decipher the dimension of airport choice when a new airport comes into play along with an existing airport using utility theory, all of these based on responses of the travelers to Revealed Preference (RP) and Stated Preference (SP) questionnaires, with the latter based on the response of 1% of the population. Extensive sample set of 7 % of the university population is considered with two questionnaires, one an RP approach focusing on outgoing trips in 2014 and the other, an SP approach to model airport choice. Interviewees are divided into five categories, three for students based on monthly stipend and the rest for faculty and staff, with trips being differentiated purpose-wise. Number of annual trips by air and other modes is estimated for the sample set with adjusted R2 and p-values giving simplified trip generation equations. Choice of main modes like flight and train and ground access modes of auto and taxi, is deciphered using Multinomial Logit modeling with McFadden R2, p-values and prediction-success tables being evaluation criteria. Conditional probability of airport choice is calculated using a balanced and orthogonal fractional factorial design of 9 options with airfare, flight frequency, airport access time and airport delay, each being three-level indicators. A sound theoretical framework to dissect the intricacies of intercity travel choice with special importance to air travel has been constructed here with the results demonstrating that travel behaviour is not an independent entity but a function of mode and socioeconomic characteristics. Individuals whose households have higher socioeconomic conditions fly more frequently and choose comfortable modes of travel, in general. Airfare and flight frequency are found to be vital attributes for a potential airport choice study. This study provides flexibility in application to any region under similar principles to understand the nuances of travel behaviour better.