Efficiency measurement of Chinese airports with flight delays by directional distance function

This paper employs directional distance function to evaluate the technical efficiency of twenty major Chinese airports from 2006 to 2009 within a joint production framework of desirable and undesirable output (i.e. flight delays). The results indicate that the overall average efficiencies of Chinese airports increased over the period of time. The international hub airports are found to operate at higher efficiency level, which indicates that these airports run well in producing more desirable outputs and controlling flight delays. Although the average efficiency score of listed airports is higher than non-listed ones, the difference between the two group is statistically insignificant. A comparison between the results without and with flight delays show that several airports experienced significant changes in their efficiency scores after considering undesirable output.     

Comparative analysis of efficiency for major Southeast Asia airports: A two-stage approach

Within the past few years, the economy of Southeast Asia has been expanding rapidly with the rise in demand for air transport services. International airports are important driving forces for Southeast Asia countries' economies. Therefore, the competitive ability of these airports is very essential in terms of development and competitiveness within the region. This paper investigates the capabilities of these airports by a two-stage approach. The strengths and weaknesses of each Southeast Asia airport are evaluated by Data Envelopment Analysis – Slack-Based Measurement (DEA-SBM) in the first stage. This is a non-parametric approach to measure the efficiency of 9 major airports in the area including Changi Airport (Singapore), Suvarnabhumi Airport (Thailand), Kuala Lumpur Airport (Malaysia), Soekarno Hatta Airport (Indonesia), Ninoy Aquino Airport (the Philippines), Noi Bai Airport, Tan Son Nhat Airport (Vietnam) and Guangzhou Baiyun Airport (China), Hong Kong Airport (Hong Kong). In the second stage, Tobit regression is used to estimate the influence of multiple factors toward the efficiency of each airport. By generalizing and comparing two stages, the analysis allows us to evaluate each airport's efficiency in seven years, as well as the impact of multiple factors in one airport's performance. The implications for improvement are also obtained and discussed.     

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.     

Evaluating the multi-period operating efficiency of international airports using data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist productivity index

For the most part, airports are publicly or semi-publicly owned and operated with fixed assets. As such, airports have been often considered little more than infrastructure providers for airlines. However, as airports have begun to offer a variety of ancillary services including passenger transfers, re-fueling, parking, and shopping, they no longer play second fiddle to airlines. To come into their own, a growing number of airports realized their need to develop competitive strategies that can attract more air traffic and generate greater revenue. Such strategies start with the assessment of their competitiveness in terms of operating efficiencies relative to others. To help airport authorities identify major drivers for enhancing the airport operational efficiency and the subsequent competitiveness, this paper evaluates the comparative efficiencies of international airports for a multi-year period (2006–2011) using data envelopment analysis intended for dynamic benchmarking and Malmquist productivity index built on time-series analysis. Our study indicates that the productivity of an airport was influenced by exogenous factors such as shifts in government policies and technological advances rather than endogenous factors driven by improvements in managerial practices.     

Efficiency drivers of international airports: A worldwide benchmarking study

The main purpose of these work was to identify operational efficiency drivers of international airports. In order to achieve this, a two-step quantitative-qualitative research approach was conducted. In the first step, a two-stage DEA model was used, and it was possible to identify, within a sample of the 60 biggest airports from the six Airport Council International (ACI) regions, the most efficient airports of the world: Beijing International Airport, Heathrow International Airport, Dubai International Airport, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. In the second step of the research, four airports were selected in order to search for the efficiency drivers. In this context, Heathrow International Airport was considered to be a benchmark and presented most of the identified efficiency drivers (27 of 31). Standing out were Just-in-Time (JIT) and Total Quality Management (TQM) principles and also Passenger boarding optimization, besides the presence of almost all of the most relevant efficiency drivers, according to airport managers.     

A systematic approach to assess the effectiveness of airport noise mitigation strategies

Regional airports are often located very close to the urban area they serve and the increasing traffic rate that many of them have experienced in the last years has produced several impacts on the communities living close to the airport area, mainly aviation noise. If not properly managed, noise impacts produced by airport operations can cut down significantly the development of airport air traffic with direct effects on the economic and territorial systems. Aeronautical noise has greatly reduced in the last decade, due to aircraft design technological improvements and more severe regulations. However, the noise reduction during a single event does not make the issue of the airport location – and then the whole noise impact – less significant. This paper proposes an assessment process to evaluate the effects of actions adopted to reduce airport noise impacts on populated areas. Both airport-related factors – such as number of take-off; day-evening-night distributions of movements; aircraft type; flying paths – and land-use characteristics have been considered and combined in a density index that synthesizes the impacts of airport noise on the territory. The assessment process has been tested on a real case, the airport of Bologna in Northern Italy. The predicted results, compared with available real data for the test case, are significant and encourage the use of the proposed assessment process as decision support system for the airport management.     

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.     

Are outsourcing and non-aeronautical revenues important drivers in the efficiency of Spanish airports?

This paper evaluates the influence of contracting out, or outsourcing, certain airport services and of commercial diversification strategy. Although most of the effort is being put towards applying non-parametric techniques in airport efficiency studies, we have chosen parametric methodology. We use a distance function, as it has known advantages. The findings show the positive contribution of outsourcing and non-aeronautical revenues on the efficiency of the Spanish airports' network.     

Spatial distribution characteristic of Chinese airports: A spatial cost function approach

This paper uses spatial econometric models to analyze the spatial distribution of Chinese airports from 2002 to 2012, taking into consideration the factors that explain the distribution of airports around the country. A cost function allowing for latitude and longitude is estimated based on spatial location, which leads us to advise the implementation of policies that take into account the spatial distribution of the airports. Results show that the development of airports in China needs to consider the spatial relationship among the many different regions of China. To improve the cost efficiency, airports should be located in more economically developed areas. Meanwhile, it also helps to reduce the cost when listing on the stock market.     

Sustainable airport development with performance evaluation forecasts: A case study of 12 Asian airports

This study evaluates airport performance from 2014 to 2021 with actual and forecasted data to help plan airport sustainability and establish sustainable airport development strategies. Eight Chinese airports (PEK, PVG, CAN, SZX, SHA, XMN, HAK, and HKG) and four representative Asian airports (HND, ICN, SIN, and DEL) are studied. Airport performance is evaluated from the process level (i.e. operational processes providing aeronautical service and financial processes providing commercial service) to the airport level using the Network DEA with actual and forecasted data from the grey model. Results indicate that HKG has been and will be efficient for the entire study period. There is an observed trend of an overall efficiency decrease during the forecast period of 2018–2021. This study classifies operationally efficient airports (PEK, HND, and XMN) and financially efficient airports (HAK, ICN, and DEL). Mainland Chinese airports show significantly higher operational efficiency than financial efficiency, and lower rankings in overall efficiency. It is expected that mainland Chinese airports will soon develop beyond the transportation center, possibly towards the aerotropolis, balancing economic, social, and environmental aspects for sustainable development. This study helps airport management to evaluate sustainable development strategies by assessing current and near future conditions affecting sustainability.     

Accessibility and attractiveness of European airports: A simple small community perspective

This paper describes a simple method for comparing airports based on their accessibility to regional, continental or global air transport networks, using a variety of different measures of traffic. The method is applied to all Irish and UK airports for the years 2000, 2003 and 2005 and compares the performance of these airports in serving the UK/Ireland, Western European, Greater European, North American and global air transport markets. The method may be generalised to assess other regional groupings of airports in differing regional contexts, in situations where very limited demographic and socio-economic data are available.     

Japanese-airport benchmarking with the DEA and endogenous-weight TFP methods: testing the criticism of overinvestment in Japanese regional airports

As aviation demand increased constantly along with the rapid economic growth in Japan and surrounding East Asian countries over the last several decades, Japanese government promoted airport construction since 1950s. However, the recent change in the economic background has made rise to a criticism toward the inefficient public investment, especially the transportation infrastructure. In this criticism, it has been argued that some of the small regional airports are indeed suffering the issue of overinvestment. Thus this paper attempts to verify the validity of such criticism by statistically measuring the efficiency of Japanese airports and conducting comparative analysis. For this objective, the paper employs two distinct methods namely data-envelopment analysis and endogenous-weight TFP methods. The results from these methods consistently indicates that the efficiency of regional airports in mainland Japan are lower than others, and that those airports constructed in the 1990s are relatively inefficient.     

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.     

On the discrepancy in the social efficiency measures between parametric and non-parametric production technology identification

In conventional social productive efficiency measurements that consider the production of undesirable outputs such as CO2, a DEA-based non-parametric method of production possibility frontier (PPF) identification coupled with the directional distance-function approach a-la Luenberger (1992) is typically employed. This paper shows that the discrepancy between parametric and non-parametric methods of PPF identification in social inefficiency measures can be non-negligibly large when the number of observations is small or the data are not well-scattered. By using the same data as Ha et al. (2011), who used non-parametric PPF identification to measure the social efficiency of Japan's inter-city transport services with lifecycle CO2 as the undesirable output, this paper demonstrates that adopting parametric PPF identification instead can result in considerably higher inefficiency measures for decision making units (DMUs) with relatively large undesirable outputs.     

A dynamic network efficiency measurement of airports performance considering sustainable development concept: A fuzzy dynamic network-DEA approach

In this paper, sustainability of airports is considered through a multi-perspective, multi-system, and multi-process operation. It is explored how an extension of fuzzy dynamic network performance measurement approach helps to determine the efficiency performance of an airport system. In this way, a three-pronged approach is intended which considers the internal functions of an airport, functions affecting the community and functions related to the passengers simultaneously. This novel combination makes it possible to have a comprehensive evaluation of airports' performance. Besides, fuzzy extension of SBM dynamic network approach makes it possible to deal better with the vagueness of variables during analysis. So, this extension is valuable from both technical and conceptual aspects which in turn provide useful information and insights for the future design of holistic strategies connected with sustainable development of airports where ever they are.     

Measuring airports’ operating efficiency: a summary of the 2003 ATRS global airport benchmarking report

This paper provides a partial summary of the 2003 ATRS (Air Transport Research Society) Global Airport Benchmarking Report which uses the annual data for 2000–2001. The objective of the ATRS benchmarking report is to measure and compare the performance of several important aspects of airport management and operation: productivity and efficiency, unit costs and cost competitiveness, financial results. The report also examines the relationships between various performance measures and airport characteristics in order to better understand the observed differences in airport performance. This particular paper extracted from the benchmarking report focuses on measuring and comparing operating efficiency performance of the world’s major airports. In particular, the paper presents the results on the airports’ Variable Factor Productivities (VFP) after removing the effects of the variables beyond managerial control. In the process, it identifies the effects of various factors influencing airport’s VFP, and computes a ’residual’ VFP index as an indicator for airports’ operations efficiency.     

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).     

Analysis of the operational performance of brazilian airport terminals: A multicriteria approach with De Borda-AHP integration

ObjectiveThis study proposes a multicriteria approach for the comparative analysis of the operational performance of Brazilian airport terminals.MethodologyTwo multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) methods – De Borda and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) - were applied in an integrated manner to the database of the performance report from the Brazilian Department of Civil Aviation (Secretaria de Aviação Civil – SAC/PR), composed of evaluations issued by 18,062 respondents regarding 15 airport terminals, 12 of which are analyzed in this study considering 8 evaluation criteria. On the first level, the AHP method was used to assign weights to the criteria. On the second level, the De Borda method was applied to rank the alternatives.ResultsThe proposed method resulted in a final ranking of alternatives that was significantly different from the one presented in the SAC/PR report.Contribution to knowledgeThe employment of the integrated De Borda-AHP method is not common and ensured a greater approximation with the overall user satisfaction indicator, showing that it is the more appropriate methodological option when compared with the arithmetic mean commonly used in public reports.Contribution to societyBased on the obtained ranking, air transport users will be able to have a more realistic comparative picture of the main airport terminals analyzed.Contribution to the management of the airport systemThis work contributes to the strategic planning and allocation of investments seeking to adapt and expand the sector, and also to the continuous improvement of the service levels provided at airports.