Determinants of flight delays at East Asian airports from an airport,route and network perspective

Previous studies on determinants of flight delays have been limited to the attributes of departure and arrival airports and routes and experiences in North America and Europe. This research extends the existing discussions by considering a network perspective to explore East Asian airports. A total of 4611 routes among 318 airports in the second half of 2017 are analyzed using panel data regressions. Results show that the attributes of airports and routes linked with the departure and arrival airports of a flight are the essential determinants of flight delays in East Asia. However, the congestion internalization and hubness effect of departure and arrival airports suggested in previous research are not observed in this region. The associations of slot control levels and route attributes with delays are varying between airports inside and outside China and domestic and international routes. This research supplements a new perspective to understand the determinants of flight delays in existing literature and provides a rarely observed knowledge to encourage East Asian airport operators and carriers developing management strategies for minimizing flight delays.     

Optimising flight connection times in airline bank structure through Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search algorithms

In hub and spoke airline networks, flight arrivals and departures generally have a bank structure to increase connections among spoke cities through a hub airport in order to provide cheaper service for higher volumes of air traffic. In this study, we introduce the airline bank optimisation problem with a novel mathematical model for improving flight connection times. The mathematical model aims to minimise the total connection times for transfer passengers and generates flight schedules regarding slot capacities in the hub airports. Since the problem is a combinatorial optimisation problem NP-hard and computational complexity increases rapidly for real-world problems, we employ the simulated annealing and the tabu search algorithms to achieve better solutions in a reasonable time. We generate sub-problems using real-world data and investigate the effectiveness of the algorithms. Finally, we present the results of a real case study of a Turkish airline company which has a hub airport connecting the flights between Middle Eastern and European cities.     

Cargo market competition among Asia Pacific's major airports

Globalization and the ensuing changes in the supply chain network have strengthened competition among airports. For this study, we selected 13 primary airports in Asia Pacific, and investigated their competition, airport hierarchy, and competitive potential in cargo markets in terms of demand and supply. Specifically, we examined indicators including flight frequency, route distributions, composition of flag carriers, international trade, and centrality of the selected airports. The results revealed that Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), Hong Kong International Airport (HKG), Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG), and Incheon International Airport (ICN) had the greatest competitive advantage of distinct developmental patterns. Compared with TPE and ICN, which are national-carrier-oriented airports, HKG and PVG have been developed efficiently in the network of both national and foreign carriers. Although TPE and ICN perform well in the networks of conventional carriers, PVG is competitive in the network of all-freight carriers, and HKG performs efficiently in both the networks of the conventional and all-freight carriers. Overall, Hong Kong International Airport has been prominent in the Asia–Pacific air-cargo market. Nevertheless, considering the networks of the integrator carriers, Chinese airports have the most potential in this region.     

Expanding airport capacity of cities under uncertainty: Strategies to mitigate congestion

Airport capacity constraints are increasingly challenging the growth of air traffic. At the same time, decision-making about airport capacity investments is extremely complex, involving trade-offs. This paper’s objective is to optimise a privately owned airport system’s capacity investment decision in a city under demand uncertainty. Next to the investment size, our real options model incorporates the timing of the investment, as well as the cost of congestion. The results reveal that the larger a city’s initial airport capacity, the smaller its investment will relatively be and the lower the occupancy rate threshold at which investment will take place. We also show that, in case of a higher demand growth combined with more demand uncertainty, the city will benefit from a significantly larger investment, but made later at a higher occupancy rate. In this case, cities with a small initial capacity will sometimes even more than double current capacity. Higher airport charges and an increase in non-aeronautical revenues both lead to a later investment in more capacity, due to the increased project attractiveness. An increase in congestion costs results in a larger investment made earlier, in order to eliminate delays. Airport operational cost and capacity holding cost increases both lead to smaller investments.     

Is spatial dispersal the dominant trend in air transport development? A global analysis for 2006–2015

The economic performance of a city or region is considered to be intertwined with its air travel capability. It is thus important for planners and stakeholders to understand the changes in the global aviation network. This study investigates the global aviation network, taking 10 years worth's OAG data from the years 2006–2015 and examines whether a spatial dispersal trend dominates the development of the aviation industry. It considers the aviation network at the airport level, and the airport–city level, which may consist of one or more airports. After clarification of the various definitions of concentration, we find that there appears a trend toward a dispersal pattern in the global aviation network at the airport level. On the other hand, there appears a slight concentration at the airport–city level. Besides, there have been some major capacity expansions at airports in the Middle East and East Asia, while the capacities of some traditional hubs in Europe and North America have become increasingly constrained since the 2008 global financial crisis. Furthermore, our study provides further observations consistent with the phenomenon of bypassing of traditional hubs, especially mega-hubs. Competition for passengers among hubs and secondary airports, especially in multi-airport cities, is discussed.     

Analysis of Iranian passengers' behavior in choosing type of carrier in international air travel to East Asia

Increased demand for East Asia flights from Tehran has intensified competition between Iranian and foreign carriers. In addition, the entrance of low-cost carriers (LCC) will make this competitive market even more intense. In this condition, carriers are striving to gain more market share by improving services and discounting their fares. Therefore, analyzing air travel demand is valuable for carriers' long term and short term planning. This study empirically investigates passengers' behavior in choosing five types of carriers in many groups of passengers using multinomial logit (MNL) and nested logit (NL) models. The data were collected through the stated preference (SP) questionnaire designed based on orthogonal main-effect. The main survey was conducted in the Imam Khomeini International (IKI) airport in July 2013 where 480 questionnaires were collected through face-to-face interviews. The results show that the ticket fare, the possibility of travel on desired date and time, international air travel experience, Frequent-flyer program (FFP) membership status, marital status, and gender are statistically significant contributors in explaining carrier choice. Interaction effects between trip purpose and ticket fare are statistically significant in choosing carriers. The results further indicate that business travelers are more willing to pay than non-business travelers for flights on desired date and time, although varying by type of carrier.     

Do the Gulf airlines distort the level playing field?

Gulf State aviation repeats a national development model previously applied in Southeast Asia. Developing national carriers and airport infrastructure together supports tourism, technology transfer and economic growth. Gulf airports leverage geographic advantage, but greater benefits flow from the absence of curfews or expansion constraints. Comparing Boeing B777-300 unit costs for one-stop journeys between Hong Kong and four European cities via Dubai, Frankfurt, London, and Amsterdam finds that the longer Dubai journey absorbs any cost advantage from through journeys on wide-body aircraft. Configuration impacts unit cost. Emirates configurations match Lufthansa, British Airways and KLM. Qatar Airways and Etihad match less dense Asian carriers. Finally, lower airport charges persist for the Gulf airports despite the introduction of transfer passenger fees in 2016.     

Japan's capital Tôkyô and its airports: problems and prospects from subnational and supranational perspectives

This paper deals with air passenger traffic and airport competition in Japan and East and Southeast Asia. The focus is on the airports serving Tôkyô, and the question whether they will be able to meet the future transport needs of a ‘global city’. The concentration of the paper is on two topics: an analysis of the position of the capital region airports within the Japanese airport hierarchy and an examination of the competition between Tôkyô and the major metropolitan airports in East and Southeast Asia. The paper provides insights into the basic problems and perspectives of Japanese airport policies, the current conflicts concerning the goals and strategies of airport development in Tôkyô and the complex interests of key actors.     

Perspectives on the Development of Low-cost Airlines in South-east Asia

Low-cost airlines are seen by some as one of the best things that have happened within contemporary travel. The clever business idea of offering significantly lower prices by taking out all the extras in a short-haul flight, along with innovative cost-cutting measures, was successful in the USA as early as 1973 when South-west Airlines flew her first low-cost flight. This paper asks whether this scenario has potential in Southeast Asia. According to many analysts, the environment in South-east Asia is simply not suitable for budget carriers. Governments are still very protective of their flag-carriers, there is a lack of cheap, secondary airports, South-east Asians are not wealthy enough to fly, and other cost-cutting measures like Internet distribution cannot easily be replicated. This paper argues that the opposite is true. There might not be 'open-skies' in South-east Asia, but the governments appear willing to nurture low-cost airlines to coexist with their flag-carriers. The number of airports that could serve as gateways for these airlines is more numerous than expected. The South-east Asian population is getting wealthy enough to fly and there also exists a significant market if the low-cost carriers can take advantage of it.     

Leisure versus business passengers: Similarities,differences, and implications

As low-cost air carriers increase their market share, the percentage of leisure to total passengers will increase. Data from an airport passenger survey are analyzed to document differences and similarities between leisure and business passengers. Surprisingly, the two groups of passengers are quite similar in terms of their reasons for choosing to fly from the airport surveyed, their parking requirements, and the number of bags they checked. These similarities indicate that airline and airport managers may not be obliged to make significant adjustments to their operations to account for the changing passenger mix.     

Airport and route classification by modelling flight delay propagation

Flight delay can be divided into the root and propagated delays for identification and analysis of airports/routes that have a great influence on actual flight delay using flight operations raw data (tower logs) for South Korean domestic flights. In addition, the presented concept of “generated delay” classifies airports as affecting other airport delays or affected by other airport delays. The generated delay refers to the delay time at a particular airport/route, and this delay thereafter actually propagates to other airports/routes. In this study, the generated and propagated delays were displayed on a two-dimensional graph, and the airports/routes were grouped according to delay characteristics. Group A represented airports with high generated and propagated delays, and group B represented airports that are highly affected by delays of preceding airports/routes. Group C represents airports where newly formed delays affect other airport delays, but these airports mitigate delays from other airports. Airports in group D have relatively low delays and propagation. Thus, we targeted airports belonging to groups A and C because of their delay propagation impact on other routes/airports, which must be reduced by decreasing the root delay from targeted routes/airports. Among the airports, Jeju international airport (CJU) had the highest average delay time and propagated flight delay time with similar averaged generated delay times. Among the routes, departure flights from various airports to CJU had significant propagation effects on the subsequent flights. CJU and related routes have a very large impact on domestic flight delays because South Korean domestic airline routes are concentrated on CJU. However, there has been no quantitative analysis, and it is meaningful that the quantitative analysis results were presented in this study. In addition, we suggest that other airports such as GMP (Gimpo), CJJ (Cheongju), WJU (Wonju), and KUV (Gunsan) have a significant impact on domestic flight delays.     

Airport traffic and financial performance: a UK and Ireland case study

The aim of this paper is to examine the development of air services at UK and Irish airports since 1998 and to assess the impact on airport financial performance. A sample of 14 medium/small sized UK airports and three Irish airports is used. The traffic analysis shows that low cost carriers have been largely responsible for strong passenger growth and increased passenger load at a number of regional airports. Some of these carriers use established primary and regional airports whilst others seek out small secondary airports. The airports with a high proportion of low cost traffic tend to have lower unit revenues, particularly as regards airport charges, demonstrating their desire to remain price competitive to capture this type of traffic.     

Measuring connectivity in the air freight industry

In this paper, we present an air transport connectivity model for air freight. For the purposes of this paper, connectivity is defined as all possible direct and indirect connections to or from an airport operated by wide-body aircraft, weighted for the quality of the connection in terms of transhipment and in-flight times. Using this model, we analyse the networks of seven European airports. Europe’s largest hub airports carry most air freight thanks to their extensive intercontinental passenger networks, while smaller airports with a strong focus on air freight carry large amounts of cargo on dedicated freighter aircraft. For air freight operations, the catchment area of an airport is much larger than it is for passenger services, as shipments are being trucked to their departure airport throughout all of mainland Europe. Since there are many airports sharing the same catchment area, potential competition for air freight is fierce. We found that well located regions between the four large European airports have access to large air freight networks, whilst regional air freight connectivity in northern and southern parts of Europe is substantially lower.     

Determinants of selection of full-service airlines and low-cost carriers—A note on business travellers in South Africa

The research conducted in South Africa follows similar studies conducted in UK and Brazil, in investigating factors that may influence business travellers in their selection of full-service airlines or low-cost carriers. On comparison of the studies, findings related to the influence of company size, loyalty programmes, in-flight service and airport lounge facilities appear to coincide but some differences in conclusions drawn on the influence of variables such as price and flight frequency were evident in South Africa.     

Operational efficiency of Asia–Pacific airports

Airports are important drivers of economic development and thus under tremendous pressure from emerging competitors. However, few studies have analysed the operational efficiency of Asia–Pacific airports. This study therefore evaluated the operational efficiency of 21 Asia–Pacific airports between 2002 and 2011. A two-stage method was used: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess airport efficiency, followed by the second-stage regression analysis to identify the key determinants of airport efficiency. The first-stage DEA results indicated that Adelaide, Beijing, Brisbane, Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Shenzhen are the efficient airports. The second-stage regression analysis suggested that percentage of international passengers handled by an airport, airport hinterland population size, dominant airline(s) of an airport when entering global airline strategic alliance, and an increase in GDP per capita are significant in explaining variations in airport efficiency.     

Offsite passenger service facilities: A viable option for airport access?

Offsite passenger service facilities transfer passengers from a common location to an airport and may provide additional services such as baggage handling and passenger check-in. Although they are conceptually promising, there is a lack of modern methods specifically tailored to forecast their demand. This paper reports on the development of two sequential models that forecast demand for an offsite facility. Models were calibrated based on data collected at six airports in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia. The results showed that likely candidates for an offsite facility are airports that are not easily accessible, and departing air passengers with early morning flight departure times and high variability in ground travel times to the airport. A case study demonstrates the application of the models to Virginia’s Richmond International Airport.     

Low cost carriers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region: Emergence and barriers to development

This paper investigates the development of low cost carriers (LCCs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from a broader perspective. We use passenger volume data at the airline and flight segment levels to illustrate the development of LCCs in the region; we conduct a structured comparison of the actual business model characteristics of the MENA-based LCCs to assess their adherence to the archetypical LCC business model; and we compile the key barriers to LCC growth in MENA from the literature.We find that the overall market share of LCCs in MENA is still below the world average – despite high growth in recent years. The presence of LCCs varies considerably between MENA countries and route groups. The more upscale, “Jetblue”-style business model, where passengers benefit from additional, complementary services or product characteristics, prevails. Political tensions, adverse regulations and lower levels of liberalization compared to Europe or North America negatively affect LCC development in many MENA countries. While low middle-class proportions appear to be a challenge for low cost business models, Asian diaspora and tourism – from beach holidays to pilgrimage – seem to induce additional demand.     

The origin–destination airport choice for all-cargo aircraft operations in Europe

In this paper, we analyze the origin–destination airport choice for freighter operations of combination and all-cargo carriers in Europe. First, we discuss the choice process of airlines qualitatively. Next, using a stated choice experiment, we show that the presence of forwarders at an airport is the primary factor in explaining airlines’ choices, especially for airlines serving main airports. For airlines primarily serving regional airports, the possibility for night-time flights is most important. Finally, the presence of passenger operations at an airport is not a significant factor and the level of origin–destination demand is of limited importance.     

Assessment of passenger benefits brought about by international airport projects

This study sets forth a method to calculate the passenger benefits of an international airport project and assesses the passenger benefits brought about by two international airport projects.An international airport project mainly increases the number of flights and the possibility of determining convenient timetables. It does not significantly decrease the flight time of international travel. Thus, the user benefits brought about by an international airport project cannot be expressed by the conventional concept of ‘traveling time’, which is the term generally used.In this study, the ‘Expected Value of Traveling Time’ and ‘Expected Value of Generalized Cost’ are presented as indexes to evaluate improvements in convenience brought about by international airport projects. The passenger benefits of two airport projects in Japan are measured by consumer surplus calculated from the demand function using these indexes.These indexes are accurately calculated taking into consideration factors such as scheduling connections between domestic and international transport, and so enable a grasp not only of reductions in flight time, but also of passenger benefits resulting from international airport projects, such as increases in the number of flights and reductions in the time required to make transfers during domestic travel.     

Airline new route selection using compromise programming - The case of Taiwan-Europe

The decision to launch a new route has a huge effect on the outcomes of airlines in the market. In order to find potential destinations for airlines, this paper utilizes a compromise programming method for selecting direct flight routes. The selection framework comprises two objective functions, with one maximizing total revenue and the other minimizing total cost. A case studying Taiwan-European region destinations is interpreted in the analysis. The results indicate that four potential routes, including Madrid, Milan, Munich and Zurich should be added to the airlines’ service destinations. Therefore, this research suggested that the airport authority could apply incentives scheme to attract carriers to open new routes and add flight frequencies to strengthen its competitiveness.