Low Cost Carriers in China and its Contribution to Passenger Traffic Flow

Does a low-cost carrier lead the domestic tourism demand and growth of New Zealand?

“…Recent literature has suggested that low-cost carriers (LCCs) have become one of the key drivers of tourism development for a country or city (e.g. Chung & Whang, 2011;Dobruszkes & Mondou, 2013;Eugenio-Martin & Inchausti-Sintes, 2016;Graham & Dennis, 2010;Rey, Myro, & Galera, 2011;Zhang & Lu, 2013). The emergence of LCCs has attracted different types of air travellers (leisure and business travellers) to visit other destinations with lower airfares, more frequent flights, loyalty programmes, and short turnaround times (e.g.…”

Analysing passenger network changes: The case of Hong Kong

“…Distance: this represents the Great Circle distance between Hong Kong and a city or destination. In distance decay theory, the distance between two cities should have an inverse relationship with air passenger numbers between them (Matsumoto, 2004(Matsumoto, , 2007McKercher and Lew, 2003;Piermartini and Rousov a, 2008;Zhang and Findlay, 2014;Zhang and Zhen, 2013). Fuel prices: fuel prices affect air travel demand as air travellers appear to be very sensitive to increasing airfares.…”

“…Fuel prices: fuel prices affect air travel demand as air travellers appear to be very sensitive to increasing airfares. In general, fuel prices are negatively linked to air traffic flows, suggesting that higher aviation fuel prices would lead to higher airfare levels and have a negative impact on air traffic volumes (Tsui et al, 2014;Zhang and Zhen, 2013). Airport hub status of the destination: this dummy variable takes the value of 1 when an airport that connects to Hong Kong is an international hub airport, or it is a city that is a political centre or a major commercial city; 0 otherwise.…”

“…Numbers of passenger airlines in service: 6 if there are more passenger airlines providing scheduled flight services at an airport, to a large extent, this may lead to higher airport passenger throughput due to the airport's extensive flight network and connectivity to different destinations. Low-cost carriers in operation: Low-cost carriers (LCCs) can attract and transport a significant amount of leisure travellers (price-sensitive travellers) across borders, and they have been a major driver for the growth of airport demand in different countries worldwide (Barrett, 2004;Homsombat et al, 2011;Zhang and Findlay, 2014;Zhang and Zhen, 2013). Therefore, the effect of LCCs upon passenger traffic flows between Hong Kong and its main destinations was considered in this study.…”

“…However, their potential impact on Hong Kong airport's passenger traffic volumes and tourism sector (particularly that of price-sensitive tourists) should not be underestimated, particularly given the recent fast-paced growth of LCCs in the Hong Kong tourist market (in particular, Hong Kong Express Airways relaunched itself as a Hong Kong-based LCC in late 2013) and around the Asia-Pacific region, together with more Asian LCCs (e.g. AirAsia, Jeju Air, Jetstar Asia, Jin Air, Spring Airlines, and Tiger Airways) offering international services between Hong Kong and Asian destinations, as well as their ability to affect airfares charged by incumbent airlines (Fu et al, 2015;Zhang and Zhen, 2013). This could be important: the share of LCCs in HKIA's passenger throughput has risen from 0.03% in 2001 to 6.31% in 2012 (Airport Authority Hong Kong, 2013).…”