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In a context of intense airport and airline competition, a few European airports have recently started offering self-connection services to price-sensitive holiday passengers travelling with a combination of tickets where the airline/s involved do not handle the transfer themselves. This paper provides an exploratory analysis of the potential and implications of self-connectivity for European airports and airlines using a case study of air travel routes to holiday destinations in the Mediterranean. With the help of a forecasting model based on a zero-inflated Poisson regression, we identify the airports and airlines that have the highest potential to facilitate self-connections in the selected markets. The results also explore some implications of the widespread development of self-connection services in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU Environmental Noise Directive (END) requires member states to produce noise action plans for all major airports every five years. Using that data, this paper employs a directional distance function approach to estimate noise-oriented efficiency of 60 European airports between 2006 and 2011. Technical change is calculated using the Malmquist productivity index. The results indicate that European airports have improved their noise efficiency between 2006 and 2011, and some degree of convergence in noise performance across countries is seen. Larger aircraft size is linked to better noise performance. Inefficient airports would also benefit from more stringent night movement limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ski resorts in Europe are major tourism destinations that can generate traffic for their local airports. These small mountain airports can offer the airlines unparalleled accessibility to the resorts, but their catchment areas are typically not well populated. Local authorities are keen to develop scheduled flights but have failed many times in the past. In this context, there is no previous study that analyses the drivers of scheduled airport traffic in winter tourism regions. To that end, we compiled a large dataset of European airports and ski resorts and carry out a Poisson regression. Results show that catchment area, competition, and infrastructure outweigh accessibility to ski resorts as the main drivers of scheduled traffic at small mountain airports. This is linked to the dominance of low-cost carriers that prefer to operate out of major airports with larger aircraft. Small airports are recommended to focus on premium markets with smaller aircraft. • We analyse the drivers of scheduled airport traffic in winter tourism regions. • A zero-inflated Poisson regression is carried out on a sample of small airports. • Catchment area, competition, and runway length outweigh accessibility to resorts. • Small airports should focus on premium markets with smaller aircraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]