Business Aviation in Germany: An empirical and model-based analysis

The primary role of international airports is to serve the general public with scheduled and charter services, typically provided by airlines. Of secondary importance is their task to provide direct air transport access to the regional industry and to firms who operate their own fleets. In Düsseldorf (DUS), a major international airport in Germany with about 230 Thousand air transport movements (ATMs) in 2007, about 15 Thousand ATMs belonged to business aviation segment. Due to the complexity of slot allocation procedures and growing runway capacity problems at many international airports, business aviation has a growing problem at these airports to realise the demand for flights. However, neighbouring regional airports could play a complementary role and take over this traffic segment. Therefore, the objective of the paper is to describe and quantify the distribution of the growing business aviation between airports and show potential solutions and further avenues of how to accommodate business aviation at both major and near-by secondary airports. Analysis is supported by means of a new business aviation airport choice model based on a logit approach. This model differs significantly from other airport choice models for regular and tourism traffic in terms of the decision-relevant parameters: Factors such as accessibility of the airport, efficient passenger handling and the length of the runway of secondary airports play an important role, whereas price-related variables are less important to travellers of the business aviation segment. The model enables to develop promising strategies for secondary airports taking over a growing share of the business aviation segment in the case of a neighbouring international airport which suffers from congestion, thereby enhancing the overall level of service in consequence of airport cooperation.Business aviation on main and satellite airports; airport capacity problems; business aviation development; business aviation airport choice model; air traffic distribution between main and satellite airports

Airport Choice in Germany - New Empirical Evidence of the German Air Traveller Survey 2003

The paper deals with the quantitative relationship between the number of air travellers in any region and the airports chosen in Germany in 2003. The purpose of the paper is to present results of an analysis of airport choice behaviour of total air passenger demand in Germany, based on data of the German air traveller survey conducted at 17 international and 5 regional airports. About 210 000 passengers were interviewed about their trip origin, destination, choice of travel mode to the airport, purpose of their journey and further journey and person related attributes. As a result of the analysis so far, the distribution of airports chosen by all passengers coming from any region in Germany can be shown in relation to the journey purpose and destination. Based on these data, logit models have been calibrated for each market segment to forecast airport choice in relation to the accessibility and attractiveness of airports. As a further methodological step the outline of a combined neural and nested logit model of access mode and airport choice is given, which will be calibrated on the basis of the data of the German air traveller survey. Typically, the nearest airport will be chosen by most travellers, there are, however, on average eight airports serving one region (defined as a Spatial Planning Region, of which there are 97 in Germany). If there is an international airport in a region about two thirds of the demand coming from that region will choose that airport, and about one third will choose to depart from one of seven other airports. Vice versa, each airport attracts passengers coming from almost 40 regions. There is thus an intense interaction between an airport and a large influential area.Regional air travel demand; airport choice; air traveller survey; catchment areas of airports; travel route from origin via departing airport to destination area; logit model on airport choice; neural networks

A NEW MODEL OF LONG TERM FORECASTING AIR PASSENGER DEMAND AND THE NUMBER OF AIR TRANSPORT MOVEMENTS OF GERMANY

The DLR has developed and applied a “classical” model of forecasting the total number of air passengers and aircraft movements and the cargo volume at German airports for many years. The model follows the traditional approach of forecasting the trip generation, spatial distribution and assignment to routes and aircraft movements. In recent years it has been found more and more difficult to update and verify the model because of lack of specific data. We have therefore developed a more versatile model, which directly forecasts the total number of air passengers and of air transport movements at the ensemble of German airports. The forecast functions are co-integrated structural regression models which have been econometrically estimated taking into account time series data of 1992 to 2014. The paper describes the model approaches and discusses advantages and disadvantages of the classical and new model approach