Measuring the productivity of selected airports in Turkey

Criteria prioritization for investment policies in General Aviation aerodromes

“…Among these different tools, one of the simplest and most applied in this study, which can be used by managers when designing public policies, consists of a combination of different proposals, such as the TOPSIS method and the model weight restricted EATWOS method, without considering satisfaction levels or their adaptation to the object of study. The application of these tools, detailed in the results section, consists of the normalization of values for the analysis variables, the definition of distances between normalized variables to rank the aerodromes considered from the weights of the variables (Peters et al, 2012; Peters & Zelewski, 2016, 2018), establishing weights for the adopted variables (Uludağ, 2020), as well as the treatment of dummy variables applied to the studied aerodromes (Suits, 1957; Yip & Tsang, 2007).…”

“…These variables are considered in the model because they are directly related to the safety of aircraft landing and takeoff operations. To identify airport productivity, Uludağ (2020) did not use this mathematical artifice because he considered it directly proportional to the participation of the values of the variables in his evaluation model. Table 1 shows the quantitative variables used in the study.…”

“…They found that investments were connected to airports’ efficiency, as measured through variables such as labor, materials, and capital cost (inputs) as well as the number of passengers, aircraft operations, volume of cargo handled, non‐aeronautical revenue, and flight arrival delays (outputs). In an analysis of the main variables used to measure airport efficiency, Uludağ (2020) found via a literature review that the most frequently used variables are passenger traffic, cargo traffic, costs, the number of runways, total terminal area, and the number of staff. These variables, as demonstrated by the author, are applied in airports that handle high volumes of cargo and passengers, which is not characteristic of GA, which commonly uses small aerodromes.…”

“…Studies about the criteria for investing in airport infrastructure have employed different variables to guide investors' decision-making. Such variables are presented in the literature as a way to classify airports and include analysis of financial performance, qualification of airport services offered, the number of connections made, and the movement of aircraft and passengers, among others, all of which apply principally to airport efficiency in commercial aviation (Jacquillat & Odoni, 2018;Nascimento & Caetano, 2020;Rotondo, 2019;Shojaei et al, 2018;Suau-Sanchez et al, 2015;Uluda g, 2020;Zou et al, 2015). The literature is based on previously existing operational data on commercial air transport, something relatively scarce when it comes to GA. Grubesic et al (2017) make clear in their study the relative importance of GA aerodromes for local economies, despite the lack of studies on them.…”

“…However, technical elements related to aviation operations—such as the previous existence of an aerodrome protection zone, noise zoning, and the type of paving—are rarely considered in the literature. In addition, methods used in multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) commonly use quantitative socioeconomic variables to analyze airports (Jacquillat & Odoni, 2018; Rotondo, 2019; Shojaei et al, 2018; Uludağ, 2020) as well as to classify market demand data to prioritize public investments (Suau‐Sanchez et al, 2015; Zou et al, 2015), with little emphasis on qualitative variables. There are also identifiable practical implications in that public managers need simple and easy‐to‐use tools to support their decision‐making when designing public policies.…”