Factors influencing cargo airlines’ choice of airport: An international survey

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Abstract

This paper identifies and evaluates the myriad of factors that influence the choice of airport by freighter-operating airlines. The findings are presented from an international postal survey of airlines operating freighter aircraft on a scheduled non-integrated basis. A number of factors such as night curfews, freight forwarders and airport charges are found to be influential and these are examined against a number of dependent variables such as the airline's home region and operational patterns in order to identify key variations.

Introduction

Long-term forecasts from Airbus (2003) and Boeing (2004) predict a 5.75% and 6.2% annual growth rate for air-freight tonnage over the next 20 years. Within this period, Boeing predicts the freighter fleet will almost double from 1766 to 3456 aircraft. Air cargo industry trends such as reduced passenger belly hold capacity on short and medium haul routes, a growing recognition of the profit potential of cargo by airlines and potential new security regulations governing belly hold cargo, add further weight to the forecasts of freighter aircraft growth.

Arguably the most important decision for a freighter operator is which markets to serve and which airports to operate to within these markets. With the continued growth in passenger services, many airports will be unable to keep pace with this freighter growth, leading to a more complex decision making process with freighter operators having to consider alternatives to gateway airports.

Additionally, these location decisions have to be continually re-assessed for a number of reasons, such as the changing economic climate, actions of competitors or imposed legislation. The result is that the relocation of freighter services either within or between regions is not uncommon given their relatively footloose nature. This is particularly the case for non-integrated freighter operators, the focus of this paper. For the increasing number of secondary and tertiary airports pursuing a growing number of freight services, a detailed understanding of the needs of freighter operators at airports is crucial.

The aim here is to identify and evaluate the factors that influence the airport choice of freighter airlines from the findings of a postal questionnaire sent to the 118 non-integrated airlines identified as operating freighter aircraft on a regular scheduled basis worldwide.

Section snippets

Previous work

There is a dearth of existing research into the location decisions of non-integrated cargo airlines, yet there is a compact body of research in related areas that identify common themes and provide a basis on which to develop empirical research. In particular, there has been much work on integrator hub location and passenger airlines’ airport choice as reviewed in Gardiner et al. (2005).

Research method

The airline questionnaire aims to test previous assumptions identified from the literature. As such a postal questionnaire was sent out in March 2004 to all of the 118 non-integrated airlines worldwide identified as operating pure-freighter aircraft on regular scheduled services. Three reminder letters were subsequently sent out and 39 returned completed questionnaires were received between March and June 2004.

The data source used for the census was the 2003 Flight International World Airline

The importance of airport choice factors

In order to determine the relative prevalence of a variety of potential airport choice factors, the questionnaire asked airline managers how important they felt a series of factors were in determining their location. They were asked to rate a total of 15 factors 1–5, with 5 indicating the highest importance. Of these, nine were found to be particularly important considerations and these are presented in Table 2, with the mean of the ratings used to rank the factors.

The ability to operate into

Discussion of findings

Whilst the literature was less clear on this issue, the survey results indicated that airport charges and overall cost minimisation was one of the most influential factors for freighter operators when choosing airports and indeed the most significant factor that the airports themselves can control. Berechman and De Wit (1996) had found when looking at passenger hub locations that airport charges had a significant impact on airlines’ choice of airport and it has been found that this applies

Conclusions

This survey provides empirical quantification of the factors that are seen as important influences on a freight airlines choice of airport. Providing the demand is there within a radius of the airport acceptable to the airline (which will typically increase in proportion to the length of the route), then it is the costs that are the most important factor, more important than a faster throughput of cargo, provided it does not slow the turn around of the aircraft. This is in contrast to the

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to all the airline managers who participated in this survey and would also like to acknowledge the support of The International Air Cargo Association in part funding the research.

References (17)

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