An Analysis of Resident and Non- Resident Air PassengerBehaviour of Origin Airport Choice

Increasing number of air travellers in recent years and the emergence of multi-airport cities throughout the world has made the behaviour of travellers regarding the choice of the origin airport even more important. Analysis of this behaviour helps for a better future planning and development of competing airports as an important element of their demand prediction. In this paper, particular emphasis is stressed on the behaviour of resident and non-resident passengers in choosing between the origin airport through the empirical case study of the two airports of Tehran multi-airport system,namely Imam Khomeini (IKIA) and Mehrabad International Airport (MIA) in Iran. The 24- hour and one-week survey was conducted in May 2011 and a total number of 2980 questionnaires were collected from the two airports. Binary Logit was used to model the origin airport choice of resident and non-resident travellers from the city of Tehran. Results show that the difference in the two groups is affected by age , Income , Travel Destination , Trip Purpose and Marital Status . Further model results show that variables Public Access , Flight Frequency and Airport Tax are more important for non-resident air travellers in choosing their origin airport.

Keywords:

Discrete choice , Binary Logit Models , multi-airport cities , stated preference , air passengerbehaviour