A Benchmarking Analysis of Spanish Commercial Airports. A Comparison Between SMOP and DEA Ranking Methods

In this paper we use the flexibility of Surface Measure of Overall Performance (SMOP) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) ranking methods to analyze the relative performance of each individual Spanish airport, and to fully rank both efficient, as well as inefficient airports. Most airports have previously compared their efficiency according to the results of some partial productivity ratios. However, this approach does not provide a good understanding of the overall performance of the airports. For this reason, we use six different ranking approaches in order to fully rank the performance of Spanish airports. The first and second approaches are based on the SMOP obtained by nine complementary partial performance indicators. The third approach involves the evaluation of a cross-efficiency matrix, in which airports are evaluated according to its weights and their rivals' weights. The fourth and fifth approaches rank the airports' performance through the exclusion of the airport being analyzed, and are known as super-efficiency models in the DEA parlance. And finally the sixth approach is based on the analysis of the virtual airport and the comparison of the rest of the airports with this “champion performer”. Finally, in this paper, we try to fill the gap between the performance based on the partial productivity indicators and the proposed ranking methods. To this purpose, we calculate non-parametric statistical tests to verify the consistency between the ranking obtained from each method.