Access to airports : A case study for the San Francisco Bay Area

In a liberalized aviation market airports in a multiple airport region will have to compete with substitute airports for origin / destination passengers (and also transfer passengers). Passengers have to take a number of decisions; the have to choose airports, airlines and airport access modes (given that they already have decided they will fly). These choices can be made simultaneously or sequentially. These choices depend on a number of variables such as airport taxes and airport access times, frequency of service offered by the airline and airfare, and availability and cost of the access mode. Moreover, these choices may depend upon depend upon each other; depending on whether these choices are taken sequentially or simultaneously. The choice of airport access mode has been studied only sparsely in the literature; notable exceptions are Bondzio (1996) and Harvey (1986). Both authors use multinomial logit models with access time and cost as the explanatory variables. Moreover, Bondzio (1996) also estimates nested logit models and finds that business travelers make the choices of airport and access mode sequentially while leisure travelers make the choice simultaneously. In this paper we will analyze the choice of access mode in the San Francisco Bay Area in relation to the choice of airport by means of a nested logit model. The results will then be compared to the results (for Germany) of Bondzio (1996) to see if there are regional (international) differences in the determinants of access mode choice and Harvey (1986), who analyzed the same problem using data for 1990, to see whether the determinants have changed over time. Keywords : airport choice, access modes, (nested) logit models.

Access to airports : A case study for the San Francisco Bay Area

In a liberalized aviation market airports in a multiple airport region will have to compete with substitute airports for origin / destination passengers (and also transfer passengers). Passengers have to take a number of decisions; the have to choose airports, airlines and airport access modes (given that they already have decided they will fly). These choices can be made simultaneously or sequentially. These choices depend on a number of variables such as airport taxes and airport access times, frequency of service offered by the airline and airfare, and availability and cost of the access mode. Moreover, these choices may depend upon depend upon each other; depending on whether these choices are taken sequentially or simultaneously. The choice of airport access mode has been studied only sparsely in the literature; notable exceptions are Bondzio (1996) and Harvey (1986). Both authors use multinomial logit models with access time and cost as the explanatory variables. Moreover, Bondzio (1996) also estimates nested logit models and finds that business travelers make the choices of airport and access mode sequentially while leisure travelers make the choice simultaneously. In this paper we will analyze the choice of access mode in the San Francisco Bay Area in relation to the choice of airport by means of a nested logit model. The results will then be compared to the results (for Germany) of Bondzio (1996) to see if there are regional (international) differences in the determinants of access mode choice and Harvey (1986), who analyzed the same problem using data for 1990, to see whether the determinants have changed over time. Keywords : airport choice, access modes, (nested) logit models

The Home Carrier Advantage in Civil Aviation

This paper analyzes the relative economic power position of home carriers in hub-and-spoke systems. Hub-and-spoke systems may lower costs on densely traveled routes and enable economically viable operations on less densely traveled routes. The reverse side is probably that carriers enjoy significant market power at their home base, often labeled the home carrier advantage. The paper offers a concise overview of the literature in this field, and addresses next empirically this issue for European home carriers. We found empirically that at least some European carriers charge premiums for flights originating from their hubs. The hub premiums of Lufthansa, Swissair and Air France are significantly higher than those of the other companies in our sample

Guidelines for data management and scientific integrity in ethnography

New protocols for scientific integrity and data management issued by universities, journals, and transnational social science funding agencies are often modelled on medical or psychological research, and do not take account of the specific characteristics of the processes of ethnographic research. These guidelines provide ethnographers with some of the most basic principles of doing such research. They show that the primary response of ethnographers to requests to share research materials with third parties should be to remain aware of the fact that these research materials have been coproduced with their research participants; that the collaborative ethnographic research process resists turning these materials into commodified, impersonal ‘data’ that can be owned and shared publicly; and that therefore the primary response of ethnographers should be to retain custody of research materials

Comparitive Performance Analysis of European Airports by Means of Extended Data Envelopment Analysis

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has become an established approach for analyzing and comparing efficiency results of corporate organizations or economic agents. It has also found wide application in comparative studies on airport efficiency. The standard DEA approach to comparative airport efficiency analysis has two feeble elements, viz. a methodological and a substantive weakness. The methodological weakness originates from the choice of uniform efficiency improvement assessment, while the substantive weakness in airport efficiency analysis concerns the insufficient attention for short-term and long-term adjustment possibilities in the production inputs determining airport efficiency. The present paper aims to address both flaws by: (i) designing a data-instigated Distance Friction Minimization (DFM) model as a generalization of the standard Banker-Charnes-Cooper (BCC) model with a view to the development of a more appropriate efficiency improvement projection model in the BCC version of DEA; (ii) including as factor inputs also lumpy or rigid factors that are characterized by short-term indivisibility or inertia (and hence not suitable for short-run flexible adjustment in new efficiency stages), as is the case for runways of airports. This so-called fixed factor (FF) case will be included in the DFM submodel of DEA. This extended DEA – with a DFM and an FF component – will be applied to a comparative performance analysis of several major airports in Europe. Finally, our comparative study on airport efficiency analysis will be extended by incorporating also the added value of the presence of shopping facilities at airports for their relative economic performance

Price Elasticities of Demand for Passenger Air Travel

The demand for air transport is largely determined by the spending capacity of customers. Thispaper aims to offer more insight into the determinants of price elasticities in the aviation sector. Itseeks to identify both common and contrasting factors that influence the price elasticities, on thebasis of a comparative analysis among a large number of empirical studies in this field. By meansof meta-analytical methods the relative importance of several driving forces (e.g., distance, type ofticket, nature of study etc.) is investigated

A Meta-analysis of the Price Elasticity of Gasoline Demand. A System of Equations Approach

Automobile gasoline demand can be expressed as a multiplicative function of fuel efficiency, mileage per car and car ownership. This implies a linear relationship between the price elasticity of total fuel demand and the price elasticities of fuel efficiency, mileage per car and car ownership. In this meta-analytical study we aim to investigate and explain the variation in empirical estimates of the price elasticity of gasoline demand. A methodological novelty is that we use the linear relationship between the elasticities to develop a meta-analytical estimation approach based on a system of equations. This approach enables us to combine observations of different elasticities and thus increase our sample size. Furthermore it allows for a more detailed interpretation of our meta-regression results. The empirical results of the study demonstrate that the system of equations approach leads to more precise results (i.e., lower standard errors) than a standard! meta-analytical approach. We find that, with a mean price elasticity of -0.53, the demand for gasoline is not very price sensitive. The impact a change in the gasoline price on demand is mainly driven by a response in fuel efficiency and car ownership and to a lesser degree by changes in the mileage per car. Furthermore, we find that study characteristics relating to the geographic area studied, the year of the study, the type of data used, the time horizon and the functional specification of the demand equation have a significant impact on the estimated value of the price elasticity of gasoline demand