Passengers' airport choice and airports' catchment area analysis in cross-border Upper Adriatic multi-airport region

Although much research has been performed on passengers' origin airport choice, there is little research on airports' catchment area size and even less on airports' catchment areas in cross-border regions. This paper addresses passengers' airport choice and analyzes airports' catchment area size and its homogeneity in the Upper Adriatic region. Using the results of passengers' survey at three regional airports (Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU), Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE) and Trieste Pietro Savorgnan di Brazza Airport (TRS)) we have estimated the airports' catchment areas and airports market shares therein using multinomial logit (MNL) model structure. To additionally explore the passengers' airport choice behavior considering the different sensitivity across travellers to regional, demographic and airports attributes and account for preference heterogeneity in airport choice a mixed logit model was used. The results indicated that the three airports have relatively small core catchment areas and that the market share rapidly decreases with the increasing access time to airport. Partially, the results reinforced earlier findings showing that access time to airport is the most important determinant in airport choice for all segments (business/leisure and cross-border/domestic), however the sensitivity to access time is more pronounced in business and domestic group. Additionally, the results indicated pronounced loyalty to domestic airports and generally low importance of ticket prices, and show that in market conditions where all airports in the region have a low-cost carrier (LCC) the effect of LCC on airport choice is limited. Finally, the results indicated that the borders might have an influence on airport choice and that overall, in the cross-border regions the passengers’ airport choice process is even more complex than in non cross-border regions.