The Dynamic Relationship Between Airline Transportation and Economic Growth: The Sample of BRICS-T Countries

This study examines the possible effects of airline transportation on the economic growth of six selected developing BRICS-T countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Turkey. For airline transportation, airline passenger and airline cargo transportation variables were discussed. The study covers the annual periods of panel data from 1993 to 2021. Generalized least squares method test was applied to make empirical inferences. As a result of the application, the suitability of the model was tested by performing heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation and cross-sectional dependency tests. In the first fixed effect model established, it can be said that there is a heteroscedasticity problem in the model according to the Wald test results, that there is no autocorrelation problem according to the Wooldridge (2002) test results, and that there is a cross-sectional dependency problem according to the Breusch Pagan test results. Therefore, the model was re-estimated by making Driscoll-Kraay correction for the standard errors of the model. The findings of this study show that the amount of cargo transported by airline has a positive effect on economic growth in BRICS-T countries, and the number of passengers carried by airline has a negative effect on economic growth. A well-constructed and developed transportation infrastructure can reduce passenger and cargo transportation costs and cause transit and connecting airline transportation to shift from other countries to these countries, which will support economic growth by helping to expand visits for trade and tourism purposes.