CONSTRAINED AND UNDERUTILISED AIRPORTS: TWO SIDES OF A COIN

The global airport network consists of several thousand airports, of which around 2,500 are connected to the network of scheduled airline services. These services are concentrated on a relatively small number of high volume airports, i. e. hub airports. Analyses have shown that the top 100 airports worldwide handle about 50 % of the total scheduled air traffic. On the other side there are more than 1,500 airports with traffic volumes that represent just 5 % of the total traffic. This traffic distribution shows that besides the concentration on a relatively small number of airports the majority of airports worldwide handle traffic volumes well below their capacity limits. In fact these airports have a high interest to attract more traffic in order to cover the costs. In the research to be presented we will quantitatively show the amount of traffic concentration and constraints on the one hand and correspondingly the degree of low or “under”-utilisation of other airports, globally and for a sample of countries in different world regions. In addition, it is intended to show the change in traffic distribution over all airports of country networks over time and analyse the reasons of concentration and the dynamics of changes in airport utilization. Preliminary analysis in European countries has shown that the concentration of already congested airports has grown in recent years and that small airports have lost traffic due to the deployment of aircraft with higher seat capacity.