“…An important body of literature links the emergence of LCCs to the availability of 'secondary' airports where they could thrive avoiding direct competition with other airlines (Barbot, 2006;de Neufville, 2008;Dobruszkes, 2006Dobruszkes, , 2013Francis, Fidato, & Humphreys, 2003;Francis, Humphreys, & Ison, 2004;Franke, 2004;Zhang, Hanaoka, Inamura, & Ishikura, 2008). This aspect has been studied as a trigger for competition between airports (Jimenez, Claro, & Pinho de Sousa, 2013;Pels, Njegovan, & Behrens, 2009) a factor for airport efficiency (Martini, Manello, & Scotti, 2013), and as a potential asset to increase network connectivity (Malighetti, Paleari, & Redondi, 2008). Yet recent developments in Europe show that primary airports are in the core of LCC expansion and that the implication of this trend for smaller secondary airports remain unclear (Dobruszkes, Givoni, & Vowles, 2017).…”