Can flexibility make the difference to an airport's productivity? An assessment using cluster analysis

Magalhães, Liliana, Vasco Reis and Macário, Rosário

Journal of Air Transport Management, 2015, vol. 47, issue C, 90-101

Abstract: Airport managers are facing a tough challenge: how to maintain a costly infrastructure with a long life-cycle in an increasingly volatile market? Traditional airport development approaches, based on master plans are no longer adequate. Flexibility has been advanced as a possible solution. We can define flexibility as the capacity of an object to accommodate external pressures while still keeping its functions. The literature on flexibility is limited and the field remains relatively unexplored. One relevant topic has to do with the actual impact of flexibility on an airport's overall productivity. Although the object of substantial discussion, thus far no evidence has been gathered. The objective of this study was to contribute to remedying this gap. We applied a cluster analysis to a set of 140 North American, European and Asian airports, of which 20 are identified in the literature as being flexible. We considered a total of 14 financial and productivity indicators: if the hypothesis holds true, then the flexible airports would be less affected than the others by economic recessions or other external changes. The results do not reveal any visible differences between flexible and non-flexible airports. Despite these results, our study raises important new questions about the nature and the actual effects of flexibility.

Keywords: Airport flexibility; Cluster analysis; Factor analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969699715000587
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jaitra:v:47:y:2015:i:c:p:90-101

DOI: 10.1016/j.jairtraman.2015.05.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Air Transport Management is currently edited by Anne Graham

More articles in Journal of Air Transport Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().