Managerial performance of airports in Brazil before and after concessions

This paper examines the performance of airports under Brazil’s state enterprise for airport infrastructure, Infraero, which managed the country’s main airports until major airport concessions began to be granted in 2012. The dataset comprised the 60 main airports that were under Infraero administration in 2009 and 2015, three years before and three years after concessions began to come into effect. In that period, concessions were granted on 5 major airports previously administered by Infraero, which are among the main hubs in Brazil, and one smaller, new airport. DEA modelling was used to analyse performance in the study years. In 2009, the airports considered accounted for 56% of the market; in 2015, the percentage fell to 52%. The findings show that not only did this set of airports lose market share, their performance declined significantly. In the study period, the enterprise’s overall performance index fell from 71.48% to 62.73%, as it failed to encounter pathways to improvement in the scenario of concessions of airports to private administration.