Determinants of air traffic volume and structure at small and medium regional airports in Europe

This study investigates the determinants of air traffic volume and structure at regional European airports serving below 1 million passengers per annum. It discusses the airport choice factors for airlines and focuses on the characteristics of airport and its catchment area in order to explain variation in traffic volume for 146 regional gateways in 21 EU countries. Through the application of multiple linear regression and correlation analysis it is found that population size, airport charges and presence of capacity constraints are the most related to the number of passengers using the airport. Several different correlations are found with respect to the share of low-cost, full-service and charter carriers in the airport traffic, which in most cases extends findings of other researchers onto the field of small regional airports. The research concludes that while certain relationships can be found, their statistical significance is moderate, which leaves a scope for further study, perhaps involving smaller samples of airports. Findings of this study should be of interest to air transport researchers and to all the parties involved in route network development at regional airports, particularly to local authorities and airport operators.