Airport efficiency in the dawn of privatization: The case of Greece

Until recently, all airports in Greece were owned and managed by the state; however, the recent economic crisis led the Greek government to privatize 14 regional airports. This paper evaluates the performance of the 38 Greek airports open to civil aviation just before the privatization was concluded. It also aims to highlight that the majority of airports with high efficiency were selected to be privatized. The analysis was performed applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) using 2011 and 2015 operational and financial data. Results showed that, despite the economic crisis, overall efficiency improved between 2011 and 2015, mainly due to the spectacular increase in incoming international passenger traffic. Changes in efficiency can be attributed by and large to exogenous factors such as operations of low-cost carriers and charter operators along with the seasonal operations of established carriers at individual airports. Findings confirm that the majority of high efficiency airports were offered to private investors.     

Canadian airport security: The privatization of a public good

Economic theory would define airport security as a public good; no different than border control or the military, but this is not how it is treated in many countries. In Mexico, airport security is financed entirely from the public treasury. In the U.S., the cost is split evenly between air passengers and the public treasury. In Canada, air passengers pay the entire cost of airport security. The Canadian case is examined in detail. Forcing air passengers to bear the full cost of airport security creates a number of economic distortions. Air travel in Canada is discouraged by the added cost of security, but worse it encourages travelers to cross the Canada-U.S. border where they can fly from lower cost U.S. airports. The tax losses to the public treasury because of this policy are arguably greater than the total security fees collected.Airport security evolved organically rather than by design because governments were forced to react quickly to escalating threats. As a result, a “user-pay” financing system was put in place in Canada without careful policy analysis.     

A comparative efficiency analysis of Spanish and Turkish airports

AENA in Spain and DHMI in Turkey operate a large majority of the airports in their respective countries. These two airport operators share some similar characteristics, but also present many differences with respect to their management strategies. For instance, the Turkish DHMI introduced a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model and concession agreements, which enables active private participation in airport management. In contrast, management and operation responsibilities at all airports in Spain –with a few exceptions-have remained with AENA. This paper utilizes a data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compare the relative efficiency of airports within AENA and DHMI for the years between 2009 and 2011. Based on the efficiency scores, it further identifies the sources of inefficiencies resulting from various management strategies and other external factors. The results indicate higher average efficiency levels at Spanish airports, but private involvement enhances efficiency at Turkish airports. The majority of the airports in Spain and Turkey operate under increasing returns to scale. Certain policy options, including a higher private involvement and improvement of the airport network by closing some inefficient airports, should be considered in order to increase the airport efficiency in both countries.     

Airport capacity management: A review and bibliometric analysis

Over the past two decades, the aviation sector has seen dramatic growth in demand with limited support in terms of supply, due to under-development of the larger airport infrastructure. This has led to congestion and delays at major airports across the world. The topic of ‘airport capacity management’ (ACM) has thereby attracted considerable scholarly attention. From our review of extant literature, we find an extensive repository of research work related to ACM, vis a vis its inherent role and the expected output. Nevertheless, extant literature has failed to conduct a systematic literature review on ACM in order to understand its evolution over time. Therefore, we analyze ACM literature in detail to grasp and evaluate the work being done thus far, using bibliometric analysis. Our analysis reveals that airport capacity, congestion, competition and ground holding problems are important keywords related to ACM. Further, using co-citation analysis we identify 5 broad clusters and thought pattern of researchers. We also propose a flowchart of literature with major research area related to ACM. Finally, we note that the Journal of Air Transport Management (JATM) with 1086 citations and 109 documents tops the list of journals publishing papers on ACM.     

Airport partial and full privatization in a multi-airport region: Focus on pricing and capacity

This paper studies the capacity and pricing choice of two congestible airports in a multi-airport metropolitan region, under transition from a pure public, centralized airport system to partial or full privatization. We develop analytical models to investigate three privatization scenarios: public–private duopoly, private–private duopoly, and private monopoly. We find that, airports follow the same capacity investment rule as prior to privatization when capacity and pricing decisions are made simultaneously. Pricing rule after privatization becomes more complicated, with additional factors having an upward effect on the privatized airport(s) and a downward effect on the remaining public airport.     

Effects of non-aeronautical activities at airports on the public transport access system: A case study of Zurich Airport

Many planning authorities and airports study measures to increase public transport use for airport ground access and egress. At the same time, an increase in real estate development at and around airports is occurring, both due to airports seeking new revenue possibilities and other developers attempting to profit from high value locations. This paper considers non-aeronautical activities at large airports, largely commercial centres and transit hubs, as land uses that have the potential to improve the situation for operating public transport services. In order to assess potential benefits and disadvantages, four research questions are considered: (1) Can the additional travel volume reach levels at which it has a significant impact? (2) To what extent do non-aeronautical activities influence the public transport access system? (3) Is the resulting demand distribution better or worse regarding peaking behaviour? (4) Is there a potential for the resulting overall demand to bring about capacity shortages?A case study is conducted at the airport of Zurich, Switzerland, which finds that non-aeronautical activities in the direct airport vicinity have led to a situation where the operation of public transport services is much more viable due to overall higher passenger numbers and a more even distribution throughout the day. It is concluded that locating non-aeronautical activities at airports can, in addition to providing commercial benefits to developers, lead to a situation where improved public transport services become feasible.     

Airport ownership and regulation in Spain: Explaining the resistance to change

This paper presents the case of Spain where the government recently decided to float 49% of the capital of the public agency in charge of the airport system but to keep the public control over airports. The research question is why did a conservative government prefer to keep a unified hierarchical public structure at the time it was starting to be perceived as an outmoded model? To answer this question we propose five hypothesis taken from political science and policy process theories and we confirm that ideas and beliefs within the policy subsystem together with the external shock of the 2008 economic crisis played a role in favor of policy change. However, core values of statewide political parties and political interests with regard to avoid higher territorial decentralization explain the policy reversal. Empirical results are based on the views of political and economic actors, both in favor and against the status quo, with regard to the propositions expressed in the hypothesis.     

The development of Manchester Airport, 1938–1978: central government subsidy and local authority management

This paper assesses the historical impact of central government policy on the planning and ownership of UK airports with particular reference to development at Ringway, Manchester. We argue that during a crucial period in the creation of airport infrastructure, central government policy proved equivocal. This meant that it was left to the municipal owners to undertake investment if the airport was to grow. The only significant state support was the provision of grant aid when government generally rejected the principle of subsidised airport operations. The local authority displayed considerable initiative, and the result was the nurturing of an international gateway.     

Airport operations and security screening: An examination of social justice

Airports are a crucial part of the United States transportation system and airport officials are continuously challenged to ensure that their operations are secure. A major part of providing airport security is implementing check points where passengers interface with the security screening system. The airlines and airport security administration receive negative publicity when passengers are mistreated at security check points. Further, these organizations spend a lot of time to assess the situation and take corrective actions. This study examines passenger perceived bias and the airport security screening system. Using data from a randomly selected sample of 145 airline passengers, six hypotheses are tested. The hypotheses exam the predictive relationships of control procedures, security personnel training, security personnel professionalism, and security screening systems on passenger perceived bias. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses. The research findings indicate that security personnel professionalism is negatively and significantly related to passenger perceived bias. Also, security personnel training and security control procedures are positively and significantly related to security personnel professionalism. Management implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are offered.     

Airport ground access and private car use: a segmentation analysis

The increasing scale of, and demand for, civil air transport world-wide has resulted in a greater volume of people travelling to and from airports. The vast majority of these journeys are made by private cars, which has led to traffic congestion and raised levels of air pollution in and around airports. Subsequently, airports are re-evaluating their approach to ground access mode choice and considering how to reduce the reliance on private cars. Based on a survey of passengers at Manchester Airport in the UK, attitude statements pertaining to psychological constructs from the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Norm-Activation Theory, combined with key factors relating to the passenger’s trip, are used to identify eight behaviourally distinct groups of passengers with varying potential to reduce their private car use. Two of these groups, described as the Conflicted Greens and the Pessimistic Lift Seekers, are identified as having the greatest potential to reduce private car use to airports. Analysis reveals the need for decision makers to address the existing attitude–behaviour ‘gap’ that can prevent positive environmental attitudes being translated into the use of more sustainable modes, as well as tackling the perceived difficulty some passengers associate with using these modes.     

A complex network approach towards modeling and analysis of the Australian Airport Network

An airport network forms the backbone of any air transportation system. The relationships among the origins and destinations of flights result in a complex network of routes which can be complemented with information associated with the routes themselves, for instance, traffic load and distance. In this paper, we modeled the Australia's civil domestic airport infrastructure as a network and analyzed the resulting network structure and its features using complex network tool. This case study identifies and investigates complex network measures, such as the degree distribution, characteristics path length, clustering coefficient and centrality measure as well as the correlations among them to understand the topology of an airport network. This analysis of the Australian Airport Network (AAN) indicates that it has a cumulative degree distribution described by the power-law function. As it has an average path length of 2.90, it is considered to have small-world properties. It is also found that it has a clustering coefficient of 0.50 which is higher than that of a random network of the same size which indicates that the transitivity and cohesiveness of AAN is different from a random network. In contrast to the World-wide Airport Network (WAN), the AAN is found to have disassortative mixing similar to the airport networks of China and India.     

Airport Services and Airport Charging Systems: A Critical Review of The EU Common Framework

This paper reviews proposals contained in the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) Consultation Paper of 1995 and Draft Directive of 1997 on Airport Charges. Economic and practical problems associated with the CEC proposals are highlighted. The main conclusions are that the CEC proposals will be difficult to enforce because they are vague, implementation is left to the individual member states, and because they allow for a variety of approaches to charging systems which can include substantial cross-subsidisation across aeronautical and non-aeronautical uses at one or more airports. The fact that the Commission will not have significant powers of enforcement further reduces the impact which the proposals can have.     

A conceptual evaluation framework for organisational safety culture: An empirical study of Taipei Songshan Airport

This study included three phases. The first phase was to establish an evaluation hierarchy framework for organisational safety culture in accordance with the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) and including expert perspectives. The second phase involved evaluating weight and rankings in order of importance using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process. In the third phase, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Scheffe multiple comparison test were used to compare the different evaluation constructs and criteria of the airport's various internal safety management units. The study results demonstrated that Taipei Songshan Airport's general management units believed that ‘Safety Supervision’, ‘Safety-oriented Working Environment’ and ‘System of Incentives and Penalties’ should be considered implementation priorities to improve overall performance in the airport organisational safety culture. In addition, the ANOVA results revealed significant differences among the airport's management units with respect not only to the personal dimension, including ‘Safety Values’, ‘Safety Evaluation Standards’ and ‘Safety Management Updates’, but also to the situational dimension, such as ‘Safety Communication and Commitment’ and ‘Injury Rate’.     

Attitudes in the Danish tourism industry to the roles of business and government in sustainable tourism

The introduction of more sustainable forms of tourism in a country is likely to be the result of a combination of government regulations and other interventions and businesses making their own decisions in response to the market. This paper examines attitudes among senior managers in the Danish tourism industry to where prime responsibility lies for promoting sustainable tourism practices. The opinions of these senior industry managers are also reported on incentives and obstacles to the adoption of sustainable tourism practices, on external assistance that may encourage the introduction of these practices, and whether there should be more government regulations to encourage their adoption. Industry attitudes in Denmark to these issues are of particular interest because of the relative prominence of environmental issues in the country. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The design of light-handed regulation of airports: Lessons from experience in Australia and New Zealand

The difficulties experienced with traditional forms of economic regulation of airports involving direct control of prices have led to an interest in light-handed regulatory frameworks. Experience with light-handed regulation of airports is primarily confined to Australia and New Zealand. The paper examines the design features of light-handed regulation in Australia and New Zealand in relation to the stated objectives associated with the introduction of light-handed regulation. The paper identifies important aspects associated with the design of light-handed regulation including the incorporation of a credible threat of stronger regulation and the characteristics of this, and an apparent trade-off in objectives achieved with different approaches to light-handed regulation.     

Impact of pandemic control over airport economics: Reconciling public health with airport business through a streamlined approach in pandemic control

Rapid aviation commercialisation and upsurge in worldwide affluence created a new avenue for disease proliferation across countries at an unprecedented rate. Epidemic and pandemic occurrences over the last decade demonstrate airports' role in disease transmission; while also exhibiting their importance as containment nodes. Tremendous amount of resources and effort are necessary to achieve the latter but inevitably, disrupt normal operations. The contrasting objectives between public health authorities and airport authorities result in compromising measures for both parties. Broadly similar controlling measures were adopted by various airports during outbreaks in the last decade. Their effectiveness have been analysed in terms of disease control; economic impact to airports were, however, not quantified. This paper concludes that more efficient airport pandemic control plans cause less severe economic impact on airports during pandemic and recommends a streamlined approach that improves overall effect of pandemic control while minimising economic impacts to airport businesses.     

An evaluation of departure throughputs before and after the implementation of wake vortex recategorization at Atlanta Hartsfield/Jackson International Airport: A Markov regime-switching approach

This paper utilizes a Markov regime-switching model to decompose airport departures into two regimes and to investigate the change in departure throughputs before and after implementing wake recat at ATL. Although analysts may not always know with certainty which regime prevails and how long it may last, they can compute the transition probabilities and expected duration of each regime. After the implementation, there was a 91% chance that departure throughputs would remain unconstrained (up from 86% before implementation) and a 37% chance that departure throughputs would become constrained (up from 35% before implementation).     

Validating delay constructs: An application of confirmatory factor analysis

This paper proposes to use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to evaluate the relationship between six observed variables (arrival and departure counts, arrival and departure demand, taxi-out and airborne delays) and their underlying latent (unobserved) constructs (operations, demand, and delays) at six of the most delayed airports (EWR, JFK, LGA, MIA, ORD, and SFO) during the calendar years of 2006–2008. The CFA revealed a good fit between the six observed variables and the three factors that may explain on-time performance except in the case of JFK. The use of CFA can help analysts validate constructs when theory supports a priori predictions and relationships between observed and unobserved variables.     

Airport Services and Airport Charging Systems: A Critical Review of The EU Common Framework

This paper reviews proposals contained in the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) Consultation Paper of 1995 and Draft Directive of 1997 on Airport Charges. Economic and practical problems associated with the CEC proposals are highlighted. The main conclusions are that the CEC proposals will be difficult to enforce because they are vague, implementation is left to the individual member states, and because they allow for a variety of approaches to charging systems which can include substantial cross-subsidisation across aeronautical and non-aeronautical uses at one or more airports. The fact that the Commission will not have significant powers of enforcement further reduces the impact which the proposals can have.