Growth Of Air Transport Research Articles

DESIGN and be SMART: Eleven engineering challenges to achieve sustainable air transportation under safety assurance in the year 2050

The aviation industry faces various challenges in meeting long-term sustainability goals amidst surging demand for air travel and growing environmental concerns of the general public. The year 2050 is set as an ambitious goal for net zero emissions, a substantial reduction in carbon dioxide emissions per passenger kilometer flown, major improvements in aircraft energy efficiency, and a development towards autonomous, intelligent operations. This review explores the pivotal role of advancements in engineering for achieving sustainability in aviation. Through a comprehensive review of existing literature and case studies, our work highlights how innovations in all aspects of aircraft engineering coupled with operations-related technologies, offer promising solutions to mitigate environmental impact, enhance efficiency, and ensure long-term sustainability in aviation operations. To discuss the necessary advances, we promote the so-called ‘DESIGN and be SMART’ framework, consisting of eleven complementary engineering challenges towards reaching sustainability. To address the high safety levels reached in air transportation, our DESIGN and be SMART framework also addresses the safety assurance challenge that is overarching each of the eleven engineering challenges. We believe that through an orchestrated integration of hardware advancements with innovative software solutions, and novel safety assurance methods, the aviation industry can realize synergistic benefits that drive sustainable growth of air transportation. Our review contributes to such an orchestration by describing the status quo and research challenges ahead.

Socioeconomic Factors Driving International Travel Destination for Tourism

ABSTRACT Commercial air transport growth and its technological evolution have played a pivotal role in facilitating increased people movement across nations. While numerous studies have examined the broader international travel demand evolution or specific patterns between locations, understanding the drivers that propel people towards different destinations is essential for both companies’ planning and the formulation of public policies. This study contributes to this endeavor by analyzing three crucial socioeconomic factors that shape our global reality: globalization, countries’ economic structure, and the dynamics within this structure. Through the utilization of panel data regression analysis methodology, the relationships between the evolution of international tourism and these socioeconomic factors are estimated and discussed. The findings highlight strong associations between each perspective analyzed and the historical demand for tourism, which provides valuable insights for developing strategies that harness the positive impacts of globalization, addressing regional disparities, and promoting sustainable tourism growth.

The impact of air transportation, trade openness, and economic growth on CO2 emissions in Saudi Arabia

The global economy has reported an unprecedented increase in growth rates over the last 2 decades, due to rapid evolution in transportation and communications. The rapid growth of international trade has increased the demand for fossil fuel, leading to exacerbated environmental risks. Air transportation is an essential operational practice in trade openness and has many economic benefits. However, its effect on CO2 emissions is not well understood. Studies on the causal relationships between air transportation, trade openness, economic growth, and CO2 emissions are lacking, especially across Middle Eastern countries. This study targets Saudi Arabia, one of the largest countries in the Middle East region in terms of economic capabilities and geographical area, to investigate the impact of air transportation, trade openness, and economic growth on CO2 emissions. To this end, data was derived from the World Development Indicators (WDI) established by the World Bank for the period 1991–2023. An autoregressive, distributed lag autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was used to analyze associations among the study variables; the empirical findings confirm that air transportation, trade openness, and economic growth have positive and statistically significant effects on CO2 emissions in both long- and short-run scenarios. However, the results illustrate that economic growth alone is unable to sufficiently reduce CO2 emissions in Saudi Arabia, indicating a lack of connection between economic policies and environmental goals. Thus, these results indicate that the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is not valid for Saudi Arabia. In addition, this study provides useful insights for policymakers to mitigate CO2 emissions. Suggestions include attracting foreign investment, modifying the structure of trade, mitigating the reliance on imports and enhancing exports, while focusing on green strategies for economic growth, replacing fossil fuels with clean and renewable sources, subsidizing environmentally friendly technologies, and enacting decarbonizing regulations.

Improving the calculation module for estimating pollutant emission from conventional and hybrid regional aircraft

For the aviation sector, it is extremely important to devise revolutionary solutions in the field of technology to restrain the potential impact of civil aviation on the environment to the level of the established strategic goals of ACARE (FlightPath2050). The introduction of innovative technologies (improvement of the combustion chamber, the introduction of electric hybrid power plants on airplanes, and the use of alternative aviation fuel) will ensure the sustainable growth of air transportation. To assess the effectiveness of advanced technologies, it is extremely important to have a model for calculating global/local emissions that takes into account the parameters of the flight path of conventional and hybrid aircraft, operational characteristics of the aircraft engine and hybrid powerplant, and the features of sustainable fuel. The improved module for calculating emission indices by combining the module for calculating the parameters of the flight path and the results of calculating the thermogas-dynamic calculation of the aircraft engine makes it possible to detect the influence of fuel consumption (engine thrust) on the values of the emission indices. This feature is representative for evaluating the efficiency of hybrid powerplants because the electrification of the aircraft fleet is primarily aimed at reducing fuel consumption. The analysis of simulation results reveals that the fuel consumption and EINOx are significantly reduced (for the climb stage – 25 %; for the descent stage – 30 %) for the hybrid AN26 compared to the conventional AN26. The specified operational measure, in the part of the low-pitch descend, significantly reduces EICO for the hybrid AN26 by an average of 50 % compared to the descend stage for the conventional trajectory. The results of calculations for the entire flight path demonstrate that the use of a hybrid power plant for An26 contributes to an average reduction of fuel consumption by 10 %, NOx emissions by 25 %, water vapor emissions by 10 %, and CO2 by 10 %.

Taking flight: Exploring the relationship between air transport and Malaysian economic growth

All facets of the tourism business, especially air travel, have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The aviation industry continues to contribute to international economic expansion significantly. The article aims to identify the impact of the development of air transport on the economic development of the Malaysian economy. Therefore, the air-transportation-led growth hypothesis (ALGH) was investigated by examining whether airline travel boosts the Malaysian economy. The effects of air passengers (a stand-in for tourism) on Malaysia's GDP were examined in the long and short term. This study analyzed Data for Malaysia using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique. The time covered was from 1970 to 2020. Certain control variables (i.e., energy consumption, financial development, social globalization, and urbanization) were also analyzed to see how they influenced economic expansion. Statistically significant effects of air travel on GDP were found in both the short and long term of this study, suggesting that this mode of transportation contributes to the sustained expansion of Malaysia's economy. Several methods, including Canonical Cointegration Regression (CCR), Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS), and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), were used to verify the results independently. The article offers legislative suggestions for improving the aviation industry's productivity, security, and bottom line.

Assessing the Key Drivers of Sustainable Economic Growth in Laos: Emphasis on Infrastructure Investment

This study delves into the factors driving sustainable economic growth in Laos, with a particular emphasis on infrastructure investments. Employing advanced analytical techniques, including GMM regressions and ARDL models, we analyze data spanning from 1995 to 2020, offering valuable insights and policy recommendations. Our consistent findings underscore the pivotal role of electricity infrastructure investments in spurring economic expansion. Highlights the positive impact of telecommunication infrastructure and a skilled workforce, emphasizing the importance of technological advancements and human capital development. An investigation from various angles reveals that variables like agriculture, air transport, industry, and services emerge as significant contributors to growth, emphasizing its multifaceted nature, and we introduce exchange rates as a variable, unveiling their potential for both positive and negative impacts on economic growth. In the long run, our study identifies a positive relationship between air transport, human capital, labor force, industry, services, exchange rates, and economic growth, highlighting their central role in policy efforts. In the short term, we observe that investments in the industry positively influence growth, while exchange rate fluctuations can have adverse effects. Our research underscores the critical importance of infrastructure investments, especially in electricity and air transport, for driving economic growth in Laos. Factors such as mobile telecommunication technology, human capital, agriculture, industry, and services also make substantial contributions to sustained growth. Notably, exchange rates can have both positive and negative effects, underscoring the need for meticulous management by policymakers to support Laos in its pursuit of rapid economic development.

The nexus between air transport and economic growth geographically: An evidence based on heterogeneous panel data models

This study examines the nexus between air transport and economic growth on continents by considering the heterogeneity in panel data with the data of 91 countries for the period 2002–2021. According to the result of the Pedroni's cointegration test, economic growth affects air transport in the long-run. These results are also supported by the results of the error correction model. In the short-run, economic growth is found to affect air transport in a few countries in Europe, while in the long-run, this effect is found to be valid for all countries. On the other hand, Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel Granger causality test shows that air transport causes economic growth in the short-run in at least one panel. This causality is found to be statistically significant in 9 Asian countries, 6 European countries, 4 American countries, 2 Oceanian countries, and 2 African countries in the sample.

Learning from past in the aircraft maintenance industry: An empirical evaluation in the safety management framework

The growth of commercial air transport arguably translates into more aging passenger aircraft queuing up for major maintenance, modifications, and/or freighter conversion with the aircraft maintenance industry. In the competitive business environment, this increased maintenance demand possesses the potential to stress the industry and make safety vulnerable. In the aircraft maintenance industry, several aircraft accidents and incidents have resulted from organizational failure to learn from the past. To address this chronic problem, this study aims to (a) establish a learning process model for the aircraft maintenance industry, (b) identify the factors that influence learning, and (c) determine the effect of identified factors on learning from the past. A review of scholarly articles and regulatory publications enabled the development of learning from the past process model and a data collection tool, followed by structural equation modeling to quantify the relationship among influencing factors. The study was conducted in the Indian aircraft maintenance environment and is based on the perspective of the front-line maintenance staff. The study found that safety communication is the decisive stage for learning from the past. Contextualization of the safety information and evaluating the lessons learned during safety communication strongly impact learning from the past, for which existing regulatory provisions are vulnerable. The findings of this study are meant to assist State regulators and management of the aircraft maintenance industry; nevertheless, safety managers and practitioners in other ultra-safe, high-risk sectors may also apply the results in compliance with the respective regulatory guidelines.

Climate Change Mitigation in Thailand’s Domestic Aviation: Mitigation Options Analysis towards 2050

Thailand’s civil aviation industry has expanded rapidly in the past ten years resulting in increasing aviation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption. The rapid growth in air transport is anticipated to continue further. Presently, domestic aviation and the economy of many countries are recovering rapidly in the post-COVID-19 period, resulting in fuel consumption and GHG emissions gradually increasing again. However, despite implementing the ICAO’s CORSIA (International Civil Aviation Organization’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) rule for international aviation, GHG emissions in the domestic aviation sector are largely unregulated. Moreover, the literature lacks a GHG emissions analysis that considers this sector’s potential growth and mitigation policies for future GHG emissions. To close the gap, this study conducted a GHG emissions analysis from this sector under various scenarios through 2050 using historical data during 2008–2020 to forecast future trends. It evaluates the impact of the mitigation policies, such as fuel switching and aircraft technology, on improving fuel efficiency due to technological advancements in aircraft and carbon pricing. The results show that the fuel switching option would result in a significant long-term reduction in GHG emissions, whereas the carbon pricing option and aircraft technology option are desirable in reducing GHG emissions in the short term. Therefore, to meet GHG emissions reduction targets more successfully, all measures must be simultaneously executed to address short- and long-term mitigation strategies. These findings have significant implications for both present and future GHG emissions reduction measures, supporting Thailand’s 2050 climate targets and energy efficiency policies as the domestic aviation industry adjusts.

The Dynamic Impact of Economic Growth, Foreign Direct Investment and Infrastructure in Laos

This study examines the dynamic impacts of economic growth, foreign direct investment, and some infrastructure variables in Laos with the time series data from 1995-2020, which have used the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model approach. The unit root test to check the stationarity of all variables in this study using the Augment Dicky Fuller (ADF) test with considering both level and at first difference. The empirical results of GMM found that the FDI is a major catalyst for economic growth in Laos which has a positive impact and is statistically significant at the level. Similarly, the role of infrastructure variables such as agriculture, industry, and service is the main of the most important indicators in supporting the economic growth in Laos, while telecommunication, electricity, air transport, and trade are positive but insignificant at the level. However, this study also found some variables such as labor, population growth, and life expectancy in support of economic growth which have a strongly positive and significant impact at the level, but the human capital is insignificant at the level. We, therefore, recommend that the government of Laos should attract and sustain more foreign direct investment and increase the infrastructural development to achieve the target of sustainable economic growth in the near future.

Macro-scale decarbonisation of tourism: insights from Australia

Governments and businesses have pledged to rapidly decarbonise tourism to achieve net-zero by 2050. While mitigation initiatives are implemented by individual businesses, destination managers need information to track sectoral mitigation progress and identify areas that require policy interventions. To support evidence-based tourism climate decision making, this study proposes a decomposition framework that assesses changes of tourism emissions based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) and International Energy Agency’s (IEA) net-zero macro-scale mitigation strategies. This framework has the capacity to track and benchmark tourism mitigation progress against milestones. A case study of Australia is used to demonstrate the approach, showing that Australia’s tourism system is not on track to net-zero, even though progress has been made on four out of six macro-scale indicators. Barriers to reaching net-zero are implied in continued growth of air transport and visitor spending, as well as the high carbon content of electricity used in the country. Results have global relevance, as they show that most countries will have to reduce emissions through a combination of government-led and destination-based strategies.

Passenger airplane manufacturing in the 20th century. Quantitative analysis

The statistics on the production and development of passenger airplanes in the world is presented in this article for the first time. The methods for obtaining the results are described, uncertainties of the results are estimated. It is specified what exactly is considered to be a passenger airplane. It is shown that only 60,000 passenger airplanes were built during the entire 20th century. This is less than 3% of the total production of airplanes of all classes. Their total capacity amounts less than 5 million people, or less than a thousandth of the world’s population by the end of the last century. These 60,000 airplanes provided unprecedented mobility of the population. It was revealed that the leading role in the passenger airplane manufacturing belonged to the USA, the USSR took a steady second place. The ups-and-downs in airplane production are described, including the recessions during the Great Depression, World War II and the global economic decline (in the USSR, the USA and other countries) in the early 1960s, which was replaced by a rapid increase in output. It is indicated that the number of airplanes produced in the last third of the 20th century remained approximately constant, but their average capacity was growing rapidly, which largely ensured the explosive growth of air transportation during this period. The dynamics of the dead weight per one passenger is given. The dynamics of the number of the new passenger airplane models is presented. It is shown that for the last 30 years of the century their number was approximately constant, and almost all the models that reached the test stage were put into serial production. In the period between the world wars, however, about half of all models tested in flight remained prototypes. The change in the ratio of the number of airplanes by the number of engines is given. The renaissance of three-engine airplanes in the 1960s, the almost complete disappearance of singleengine passenger airplanes by the end of the century and the stable amount of a small proportion of four-engine airplanes for the last 30 years of the past century are noted.

The causality between air transport and economic growth: Empirical evidence from regions in Asia

This study examines the causality between air transport (passenger and cargo) and economic growth among regions in Asia. Using panel data from 1975 to 2019, the study applies econometric methods to test the stationarity and cointegration of the data, followed by the Granger causality test, and finally estimates the effect coefficients. The effect coefficients are estimated by the panel autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and robustness tests by comparison with panel least squares (LS) methods. The study results confirm a bi-directional causality relationship in most regions of Asia. However, the study only confirms a unidirectional relationship from economic growth to air passenger transport in South Asia and from economic growth to air freight in Central Asia and West Asia. In addition, specific effect coefficients between air transport and economic growth in the long-run and short-run are also established in regions where they have a causal relationship. These findings serve as a basis for the development of air transport policy in different regions of Asia.

Территориальная структура сети аэропортов Индии

The growth of air transportation in India, caused by the economic boom in the 2010s, led to the need for the reconstruction of old (brownfield) and the construction of new (greenfield) airports. In accordance with the UDAN regional air connectivity improvement program, implemented since 2017, it is planned to build 70 airports in new locations. There are 109 civil airports of common use. Information about airports that have already been built, are under construction and are being designed is provided. Despite the implementation of part of the UDAN program, it turned out that a number of newly built airports were insufficiently loaded, new ghost airports appeared that are not in demand among air passengers. The features of the location of the country‘s airport network, its density (the number of operating passenger airports per 100 thousand square kilometers) are analyzed. Differences in the size of the Umland of airports (the ground gravity zone of one airport; calculated as the area of the territory in thousand square meters km divided by the number of passenger airports with regular traffic) and the potential air passenger capacity of the territory gravitating towards them (the number of residents of the territory per 1 operating airport). According to these three parameters (the density of the network, the size of the Umland, the air passenger capacity of the territory), a comparison was made with the network of airports in Indonesia.

Formation of requirement for an aircraft with increased payload and flight range

The constant growth of cargo and passenger air transportation, their trends, as well as laws on noise and harmful emissions requirements make it possible to create a modern cargo aircraft of increased range and carrying capacity. In this paper, the analysis of the volume of the existing air fleet and the forecast of its development is carried out, it is proposed to consider the features of the formation of requirements for an aircraft of increased payload and flight range. the formation of such requirements will speed up the design process of such an aircraft, in case of a decision to start its creation. The research method will consist in analyzing the air cargo transportation market by GDP, current and future laws, the size and type of fleet, as well as current market leaders. As a result of the study, a general description of the aircraft and requirements for its characteristics were formed, as well as the size of the market for a potential aircraft of increased payload and range. The conclusion was the statement that such an aircraft of the above type is possible.

The effectiveness of regulatory noise mitigation measures

The air transport growth of the last years has a negative side effect of increasing noise disturbances. A lot of airports have reacted with the introduction of an increasing number of different noise mitigation measures. This paper concentrates on the most important regulatory noise mitigation actions, not considering technical or operational procedures. These political regulations are often applied in a combined form so that it is nearly impossible to calculate their individual effects. To get an idea of their effectiveness this paper concentrates on expert interviews. Whenever the effectiveness was analysed so far, emphasis was primarily on noise effectiveness. Aim of this paper is to assess noise mitigation measures from the perspectives of different stakeholders at and around airports. In the analysis of the interviews the background of the experts will be considered to evaluate how far this will have an influence.

Causal nexus between air transportation and economic growth in BRICS countries

Air transportation is important factor which helps to vibrate economic activities in any economy. This paper explore causal nexus between air transportation and economic growth in BRICS countries by using balanced panel date for the period 1993–2019. Numbers of air passengers and air freight are used as measures of air transportation. Panel time series econometric techniques coupled with panel Vector Error Correction Model and Dumitrescu and Hurlin tests are applied for causal analysis. Unidirectional long run causalities are found from air passengers and airfreight to economic growth in these countries. Likewise, one way short run causal relation from air transportation to economic growth is found in these countries. Based on the findings of this, there is economic significance of air transportation in these countries, hence, important policy implications are discussed.

Air Transport Centrality as a Driver of Sustainable Regional Growth: A Case of Vietnam

With fast-growing aviation markets, many developing countries are showing remarkable economic development in global terms. As significant growth of air transportation is crucially interrelated with regional growth, it is essential to identify relevant criteria to ensure effective allocation of investments in this regard. This study aimed to investigate airport centrality using social network analysis to detect the key hubs and examine the interrelationship between airport centrality and regional economy indicators in Vietnamese regions. The results revealed that the cities of Tan Son Nhat, Noi Bai, and Da Nang were the key regional hub airports in the air transport network and the development of these leading cities had played a significant role in promoting the improvement of the entire domestic air network. Moreover, the results showed a strong positive correlation between airport centrality and regional growth features. Therefore, policymakers can optimize their decision-making processes in relation to sustainable regional development by considering air transport mobility and network in addition to conventional socioeconomic criteria.

The dynamic nexus between air transport, technological innovation, FDI, and economic growth: evidence from BRICS-MT countries.

This study examines the endogenous growth theory for technological innovation and economic growth with the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and air transport freight in seven emerging BRICS-MT economies. In the existing literature, there is no significant empirical evidence on the dynamic relationship among technological innovation, air transport freight, FDI, and economic growth in BRICS-MT countries. Thus, the current study contributes to the growing literature regarding the role of technological Innovation, air transport, and FDI on economic growth. To this end, we explore the dynamic nexus between technological innovation, air transport, FDI, and economic growth in 7 selected emerging BRICS-MT countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, and Turkey. This study covers the most recent updated period for panel data from 2000 to 2019. We applied panel cointegration, dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS), fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), and Granger causality tests to draw empirical inferences. The Pedroni panel and Kao residual cointegration tests confirm the long-run relationships among the variables. The DOLS results indicate that air transport freight, technological innovation, and FDI significantly positively impact economic growth. This study's findings confirmed the endogenous growth model in BRICS-MT countries. Furthermore, the Granger causality test results show the feedback effect of FDI on economic growth. The outcomes of this study also show the unidirectional causal relationship between air transport freight and economic growth. Moreover, the results provide support to economic policymakers in their decision-making. These results fill the gaps that assist policymakers of BRICS-MT countries in removing barriers to air transport freight, technological innovation, and foreign direct investment, thereby achieving sustainable economic development.

Optimising Gate assignment and taxiway path in a discrete time–space network: integrated model and state analysis

Airside ground traffic faces increasing congestion pressure with the rapid growth of world air transportation. Airside ground operations, such as gate assignment and taxiway planning, demonstrate excellent results from their own point of view in academia, while the integrated operations are seldom considered. In this paper, we propose an integrated model in a discrete time–space network to simultaneously deal with gate assignment and taxiway planning. An integer programming based on the multi-commodity flow form is formulated to bridge two problems. Practical constraints of the taxiway conflict and gate operation are considered. We also conduct a state analysis among the integrated model, first-come-first-served (FCFS) method, and heuristic approach. The results show that the integrated model can balance the resources between gates and taxiing paths. Sensitivity analyses reveal that the number of flight pairs and connect time impacts gate idle time and aircraft taxi time by directly changing gate assignment.