Service quality of airports' food and beverage retailers. A fuzzy approach

Nowadays the profitability of airports is largely based on non-aeronautical or commercial activities, and particularly on retail and food and beverage services. Further, researchers concur that shopping, eating and drinking in airports have to be considered an important part of tourists' experience and activities that can significantly enhance or damage the tourist destination image. Despite this, there is still little research that analyses how service quality (SQ) is perceived by passengers consuming food and beverages (F&B) in airport areas. This study aims to deepen the scientific debate on this topic. Specifically, this study applies fuzzy numbers with a sample of 551 passengers flying from Olbia-Costa Smeralda Airport (Sardinia Region, Italy) with the aim of determining how they perceive the SQ delivered by F&B retailers and whether age plays a determinant role in segmentation. Findings reveal which F&B features outperform others; furthermore, they show that age is a moderating factor in consumer satisfaction, with older passengers being less satisfied than their counterparts. This study adds knowledge to the literature devoted to SQ, applying a fuzzy number approach to the under-investigated research area related to F&B consumption in airport areas. Further, it provides information useful to airport managers on the features of F&B services that are most important in shaping consumer satisfaction, based also on their age. Limitations of the study are also discussed and suggestions for future research are given.     

The impact of variation in reporting practices on the validity of recommended birdstrike risk assessment processes for aerodromes

Birdstrikes are a major hazard to aviation; costing millions of pounds a year in damage and delays, as well as occasional hull losses and loss of life. The numbers and species of birds on and around airfields therefore need to be managed. To aid this process, airport staff often use risk assessments to identify which bird species cause the greatest risk and use the outcome to target their bird control effort. To this end, a number of national and international regulators, airports and other organisations recommend, or use, a derivation of a risk assessment process first published in 2006. This was developed using the UK Civil Aviation Authority's birdstrike database, employing data collected between 1976 and 1996. The risk assessment process relies on using the proportion of reported strikes that cause damage to the aircraft as a proxy for the likely severity of the outcome of strike incidents, so any change in the relative level of reporting of damaging and non-damaging strikes may significantly bias the results. The implementation of mandatory birdstrike reporting by the UK CAA in 2004 led to a significant increase in the number of strikes reported. If this involved a disproportionate increase in the number of non-damaging compared to damaging incidents reported, it may have impacted on the accuracy of the risk assessment process. This paper examines how differential reporting of damaging and non-damaging strikes can impact on the risk assessment process. It shows that changes in reporting practices since the original risk assessment was developed have impacted on the apparent birdstrike risk at UK airports, giving a false impression of increasing risk over the period. It makes recommendations for how the process can be better adapted to cope with such changes in the future, and how it should be modified for use in countries with different reporting regimes to that in the UK.     

Impact of a sustainable brand on improving business performance of airport enterprises: The case of Incheon International Airport

This research attempted to help understand brand management from a new perspective suited to the digital age. The purpose of this research is to empirically analyze direct and indirect influences on the relationships between sustainable brands and the enhancement of airport business performance by examining the relationships between social media, transparency, social responsibility, sustainable brand and airport business performance. For this testing, 304 questionnaires were collected from employees of Incheon International Airport. Results of the testing indicated that social media, transparency, and social responsibility had a significant influence on airport business performance through a sustainable brand. It was found that the mediation effect of a sustainable brand was significant as well. Results of this research are meaningful in that they provide implications and insights for enterprise brand management in the digital environment.     

Pro-competition rules in airport privatization: International experience and the Brazilian case

This article aims to demonstrate the importance of establishing pro-competition rules in the concession of multiple airports to private companies by describing the recent Brazilian experience. More specifically, it addresses: (i) how the economic literature deals with potential competition among different airports, and how this competition was dealt with in the concession programs of Australia, Mexico and the United Kingdom; and (ii) Brazil's recent experience with airport concessions, where international benchmarking led to cross-ownership restrictions. As a conclusion, this paper defends that governments should design regulatory restrictions that account for the existence of competition among airports. Nevertheless, these restrictions must be carefully planned and designed to achieve their goals.     

Efficiency and productivity changes in Greek airports during the crisis years 2010–2014

The aim of this study is to evaluate the operating efficiency and productivity changes of the Greek airports, during the first years of the severe economic crisis in Greece (2010–2014), by using two methods: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist Productivity index (MPI). Findings have shown that, despite the dramatic effects of the economic crisis on the socio-economic life of the country, overall airport efficiency and productivity improved, mainly due to exogenous factors such as international tourism growth. The MPI reveals that over the period of the study, airports have experienced an annual average increase in total factor productivity (TFP) of 0.9% (an increase of 3.6% over the examined period). On examining the components of this productivity change, it becomes evident that this is due to the combination of both positive (a slight progress) annual average technology change (0.5%) and technical efficiency change (0.4%). The results also indicate that 65.8% of airports have an increase in average TFP during the period 2010–2014, ranging between 0.4% and 20%. However, as Greek airports operate at poor levels of efficiency, there is still considerable space for improvements in most of the airports.     

Probabilistic assessment of fleet-level noise impacts of projected technology improvements

Demand projections for civil aviation have forecast increases in operations in future decades. Increases in demand are beneficial to the growth and advancement of the aviation industry, but also come with the threat of significant increase in environmental impacts. In response, the industry is focusing on programs to develop technologies for reductions in fuel burn, NO_x emissions, and noise. While aircraft-level impacts are an obvious metric of success, it is difficult to make informed robust technology investment decisions with respect to noise without understanding the fleet-level impacts. Fleet-level predictions of noise for technology explorations are especially complicated because it is computationally expensive, highly combinatorial, and airport-specific. Recently, rapid automated airport noise models have been developed, which can be simulated using Design of Experiments (DOE). The results of these simulations are used to generate surrogate models for airport noise contour area, which can be summed to yield a fleet-level impact. These models make use of simplifying assumptions to provide estimates of airport-level noise that are substantially cheaper to compute. They can be used to perform parametric trade-off analyses in conjunction with the equivalency assumption. Equivalency asserts that environmental impacts of a technology infused aircraft can be represented by scaled operations of the baseline aircraft in the same class. This simple assumption allows for the modeling of technology and market penetration factors under the same units: operations. This research uses surrogate models in conjunction with the equivalency assumption to examine two potential technology scenarios in a target forecast year, simulating technology and market performance factors to identify vehicle classes that could have the greatest impact in reducing contour area. Results show that technology and market performance of future notional Small Single Aisle and Large Single Aisle vehicle aircraft have the highest positive correlations with potential reductions in contour area.     

Evaluating the multi-period efficiency of East Asia airport companies

The aim of this study is to analyze how internal operating sub-processes and annual operations of airport companies influence the overall efficiency. The multi-period Network Data Envelopment Analysis is used to evaluate the efficiencies and the efficiency changes for East Asia airport companies. The results indicate that the overall efficiencies of airport companies during a specified period of time are affected by the system efficiency and the sub-processes’ efficiencies in individual periods. Furthermore, the overall efficiency change is determined by the sub-processes’ efficiency changes. According to the operating decision analysis matrix, managers can discover the inefficient sub-processes and formulate the improvement countermeasures.     

福州航空公司运行品质分析及建议

近年来，我国民航事业发展如火如荼，旅客增长的无限性与航空公司服务资源有限性的矛盾日益尖锐，运行品质的保证和提升成为各个航空公司关注的热点。福州航空公司作为国内从筹建到运营时间最短的航空公司，保证良好的运行品质对其稳健发展至关重要。首先介绍了航空公司运行品质的定义、内容和提高运行品质的措施；然后定性分析了福州航空运行品质现状，有针对性的提出了六点福州航空公司提高运行品质的优化建议。     

对新《保险法》理赔程序与时限法律规制的研究

新《保险法》关于理赔程序和时限的法律规制，体现了公平理赔、尽速理赔的价值目标，对解决理赔难问题发挥了重要作用，但仍存在与保险理赔实践不够契合、法律责任设置不完善等问题。本文从分析新《保险法》理赔程序与时限的相关规定人手，将其与保险理赔实践进行对比，并研究违反程序与时限的法律后果，最后对如何进一步完善相关规定、增强法律的执行效果提出了建议。     

浅议提升地方政府决策力

决策力是地方政府行政能力建设的重要内容,决定着地方治理的成败。本文认识到现行行政决策机制存在的问题,以及提出相应的对策来提升行政决策能力