Business Aviation in Germany: An empirical and model-based analysis

The primary role of international airports is to serve the general public with scheduled and charter services, typically provided by airlines. Of secondary importance is their task to provide direct air transport access to the regional industry and to firms who operate their own fleets. In Düsseldorf (DUS), a major international airport in Germany with about 230 Thousand air transport movements (ATMs) in 2007, about 15 Thousand ATMs belonged to business aviation segment. Due to the complexity of slot allocation procedures and growing runway capacity problems at many international airports, business aviation has a growing problem at these airports to realise the demand for flights. However, neighbouring regional airports could play a complementary role and take over this traffic segment. Therefore, the objective of the paper is to describe and quantify the distribution of the growing business aviation between airports and show potential solutions and further avenues of how to accommodate business aviation at both major and near-by secondary airports. Analysis is supported by means of a new business aviation airport choice model based on a logit approach. This model differs significantly from other airport choice models for regular and tourism traffic in terms of the decision-relevant parameters: Factors such as accessibility of the airport, efficient passenger handling and the length of the runway of secondary airports play an important role, whereas price-related variables are less important to travellers of the business aviation segment. The model enables to develop promising strategies for secondary airports taking over a growing share of the business aviation segment in the case of a neighbouring international airport which suffers from congestion, thereby enhancing the overall level of service in consequence of airport cooperation.