The fortunes of air transport gateways

Annals of The Association of American Geographers, 2006

Questions of cost and time distance have long been of interest to geographers and have become a more central concern as globalization advances. We analyze the global air travel system by examining the differences in the costs, distances, and times of one aspect of globalization. We review the extant literature on airline transportation by geographers and others, noting especially the near-century-long interest in unraveling cost, time, and distance issues and designing innovative ways to map these interrelated variables. We expand on this base to bring recent scholarship on power and positionality of cities to our understanding of air travel. Our analysis expands on previous work on airline transport geographies in four distinct ways. First, we developed an international database for a large number of cities worldwide that includes measures of distance, cost, frequency and flight duration of airline connections. Second, this database is examined statistically through ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions to measure variations in airline volume with selected socioeconomic variables. Third, these global airline data are mapped using conventional mapping techniques, and finally, we prepare a set of ''position-grams'' or intersecting spheres of regional variation that measure and map regional patterns and variations in airline connectedness.

Proceedings of the …, 2005

2008

Infrastructure networks in general and transportation networks in particular have always been important determinants of the economic potential of urban agglomerations. In the last few decades airline networks have become the most conspicuous example of this transport/urban economy-nexus.

Massey University, 2020

Due to the geographic location of Australia and New Zealand, air transport is the dominant mode of travel between the two nations and to and from the rest of the world. While the trans-Tasman air passenger market between the two countries has grown over the last 20 years, direct air routes to Australian destinations from New Zealand's regional cities of Dunedin, Hamilton and Palmerston North have seen a major decline and, in most cases, the complete closure of those routes. This study uses the two-stage least squares (2SLS) gravity model to investigate the determinants of air passenger numbers on eight sampled city-pair routes. Empirical results show that for these trans-Tasman markets, expanded seat capacity has a strong positive impact on air passenger numbers. A longer driving time to travel to the nearest alternative international airport, the 2008/09 GFC and the winter season in New Zealand are also associated with an increase in air passenger numbers. In contrast, the presence of full-service network carriers has a negative impact on air passenger numbers. These findings have some important policy implications for stakeholders.

The European Physical Journal Special Topics, 2013

Mobility by means of air transportation has a critical impact on the global economy. Especially against the backdrop of further growth and an aggravation of the energy crisis, it is crucial to design a sustainable air transportation system. Current approaches focus on air traffic management. Nevertheless, also the historically evolved network offers great potential for an optimized redesign. But the understanding of its complex structure and development is limited, although modern network science supplies a great set of new methods and tools. So far studies analyzing air transportation as a complex network are based on divers and poor data, which are either merely regional or strongly bounded time-wise. As a result, the current state of research is rather inconsistent regarding topological coefficients and incomplete regarding network evolution. Therefore, we use the historical, worldwide OAG flight schedules data between 1979 and 2007 for our study. Through analyzing by far the most comprehensive data base so far, a better understanding of the network, its evolution and further implications is being provided. To our knowledge we present the first study to determine that the degree distribution of the worldwide air transportation network is non-stationary and is subject to densification and accelerated growth, respectively.

Transportation Research Part A: General, 1990

Urban Studies, 2010

This paper reports results from an analysis of the relationship between the structure of the city-to-city network of global airline passenger flows and the interstate world system. While many scholars suggest that the broader parameters of the world system structure the urban hierarchy embedded within or articulated to it, others argue that the urban hierarchy is decoupling from the world system. The analyses show that there has been some modest convergence in the distribution of power in the world city system. Moreover, they suggest that the mechanism for this convergence is the upward mobility of cities located in the semi-periphery and the east Asian region. The paper closes by considering the implication of these findings for a larger understanding of the relationship between globalisation, the structure of the world city system and its articulation with the world system. fundamental worldwide change (for an overview, see Dicken, 2007). During this same period, 'world cities' (Hall, 1966; Friedmann and Wolf, 1982) and 'global cities' (Sassen, 1991) increasingly attracted the attention of urban-focused social science research.

Journal of Air Transport Management, 2000

Legislation in 1977 and 1978 effectively deregulated the US domestic air cargo and air passenger transportation industries. International air transportation, largely as the result of the 'Open Skies' initiative from 1979 has also gradually been liberalized but progress has been geographically and temporally uneven. This study is concerned with extending the Open Skies concept and in accessing the benefits to the US economy of removing the remaining impediments to the provision of free market services involving, in particular, the full transatlantic market. It initially reviews some of the previous work that has looked at links between industrial location and the quality of international air transportation. It develops a modeling framework to examine the implications of further liberalization on the economies of US regions that currently have limited international services. The work involves both a macro analysis of the impact of European international services for 41 Metropolitan Standard Areas and a micro-analysis looking at the developments over time at a smaller number of airports and their surrounding regions.

Meeting of the …, 2010

This paper investigates the relationship between world city formation–as measured through global connectivities produced by advanced producer service firms–and global air transport flows. Firstly, we examine the obstacles related to the construction of careful measurements of (i) a city's global airline connectivity, and (ii) its economic importance in the context of a globalized economy, and use this as a starting point to show how recent advances in conceptual and empirical research on global cities have been able to tackle ...

Sustainability

Passenger flows among cities, at both the domestic and international levels and in different countries and regions, have been studied for forecasting purposes. This paper seeks not a forecasting mechanism, but to understand, by analyzing passenger origins and destinations by Brazilian sub-region, how Brazil’s domestic air passenger network links have evolved. Using income, population, and fare price as inputs, and seats sold as output, air link performance is examined by data envelopment analysis to discuss the regional link of domestic passenger traffic in Brazil and its dynamics, considering two specific years. The findings indicate that, although the highest passenger flow density is concentrated in Brazil’s Southeast region, performance by emerging origins and destinations (O-Ds), such as those connecting the Northeast, display more substantial strength indices and advances (Malmquist analysis). The analysis of specific links was also important, which showed that important Brazi...

Journal of Transport Geography, 2013

In this paper, we build an analytical framework to estimate potential passenger traffic for new long-haul routes originating in secondary airports within national airport systems where a main hub concentrates most of the transcontinental traffic. The results are particularly important in the context of air space liberalization, which is generating opportunities for new city-pair traffic. If airport and airline managers can correctly value route alternatives, they can make better decisions concerning alliances, expansion plans, or the development of their hub-and-spoke networks.

Case Studies on Transport Policy, 2015

Given the success of shorthaul, lowcost airlines in most regional markets, it was expected that low cost airlines would next venture into longhaul markets; however, most attempts in the past decade have, like their predecessors, failed. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a longhaul, low cost operation based on a hypothetical airline that operates between Melbourne (Australia) and

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017

Economic performance of a city (or region) and its air travel capability are deemed as interlocked in the modern age. It is thus important for planners and stakeholders to understand the changes of the global air transport network. This paper uses a mixed approach, by utilizing both the topological metrics and volume-embedded tools, to examine the global aviation network between 2011 and 2015. With sophisticated demarcation of the concentration concept, the research reconfirms the trend in recent literature that suggested a dispersal pattern in the global aviation network. Furthermore, with the development of an "airport centrality index", the paper provides evidence consistent with the bypassing of traditional hubs, especially among the megahubs. Competition for connecting passengers among mega-and major-hubs is also discussed.

This paper studies the globalization of major African cities through their changing insertion in global airline networks. As such, the paper adds to a growing body of literature that analyzes the role of infrastructure in the formation of world-city networks. We draw on a rich data source that provides longitudinal airline booking data, which can be directly linked up to the evolution of inter-urban networks at the African and global scale. Our results indicate that Johannesburg remains the major gateway to Africa, but other regional centers and in particular Cairo, Lagos, Casablanca and Nairobi are rapidly complementing Johannesburg in this role. The globalization of African cities is related to rapid network growth on the African continent, but is outrun by fast growth in terms of non-African connections. Among the latter, connections to Asia and the Middle East are rapidly gaining importance. In the end, the paper argues that South–South connections are crucial for an understanding of the contemporary globalization of African cities.