Airport Efficiency Analysis in Europe Including User Satisfaction: A Non-Parametric Analysis with DEA Approach

Abstract

In recent years, the air transport sector has played a significant role in the economy of the areas served. The demand for air travel has doubled every fifteen years and has grown faster with respect to other industries. This is also due to the introduction of low-cost airlines (LCA). In the coming decades, more efficient management of airports will become an essential aspect to address. A clear understanding of the current airport structure based on the analysis of the operational efficiency will therefore be necessary. All air carriers seek to expand their operations at airports, which tend to operate efficiently in order to reduce costs. However, in carrying out their activities and maximizing operational efficiency, airports should simultaneously manage to increase their passengers’ satisfaction. All over the world, passengers are demanding higher levels of service and regulators are paying increasing attention to the provision of airport services and the quality of the services supplied. Starting from these considerations, the aim of this paper is to study the efficiency of an airport through joint analysis of the operational efficiency (with the Data Envelopment Analysis -DEA-model) for the airport manager (by maximizing the exploitation of existing infrastructures), taking into consideration the quality of airport services as perceived by the user. The original and added value of this work lies in the quantitative analysis of the main characteristics that determine the efficiency of main European airports, also taking into account the quality perceived by the users during their trips with the air mode. Thus, the efficiency of 103 European airports in 37 different countries, for the year 2018, were compared, highlighting the effect of low-cost airlines. This aspect, as far as the authors know, has not been treated in the literature. Indeed, this study represents a decision support system (DSS) tool for operational managers in the air sector for the identification of the characteristics that improve airport efficiency. This paper refers to the pre-COVID-19 period because it would not be useful to make an efficiency analysis influenced by the pandemic, since the latter represents a specific event. Therefore, this analysis provides interesting inputs for both researchers and practitioners to manage the issue of efficiency in ordinary contexts. Moreover, the airline industry is characterized by cut-throat competition, and it may be very useful in the close future to examine this issue to improve firms’ management in the industry.

Estimation and Convergence Analysis of Traffic Structure Efficiency Based on an Undesirable Epsilon-Based Measure Model

“…Karlaftis (2004) used DEA to demonstrate that the efficiency and effectiveness of a transportation system are positively correlated and that the optimal size of a transportation system varies with the evaluation metric. In further research, DEA was applied to assess the operational efficiency of airports and similar conclusions were obtained across various studies, namely that management and operation systems, system size, and technological change have a large impact on the operational efficiency of airports (Merkert & Hensher, 2011;Sukte et al, 2022;Lai et al, 2015;Henke et al, 2022). Hirschhausen and Cullman (2010) conducted a comparison of the technical efficiency of 179 public transport bus companies in Germany over a 15-year period, showing that economies of scale are not linearly related to production efficiency; moreover, production efficiency tends to decline when economies of scale are larger, thus indicating that the industrial structure can be adjusted through economies of scale.…”

Customer satisfaction and airport efficiency in Brazil: a hybrid NDEA-AHP approach

“…It is noteworthy that, in addition to this research gap, there are a limited number of studies on the relationship between customer satisfaction and airport efficiency (Wanke, 2012; Fernandes and Pacheco, 2018; Marques et al ., 2019; Henke et al ., 2022). This dynamic has recently gained more significance, as Merkert and Assaf (2015) argued that airports are evolving beyond being mere gateways for travelers and cargo.…”

Eco-Efficiency Evaluation of Integrated Transportation Hub Using Super-Efficiency EBM Model and Tobit Regressive Analysis – Case Study in China

“…The study of transportation efficiency began in the 1970s, with researchers initially measuring and analysing the efficiency of urban public transportation [3]. Subsequently, the research scope expanded to include other modes of transportation such as railway [4], aviation [5], waterway [6] and highway [7]. In the 1980s, some countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, began to focus on stock optimisation in transportation infrastructure construction, improving the integrated transportation system through the integration-substitution-expansion of single transportation modes [8].…”