Do Citizens of a City that Owns a Local Public Airport Have Attachment to the Airport and Use it?

This research investigates whether passengers living in a city with a local public airport have an attachment to that airport and tend to use it. Focusing on the greater Kansai area with its three airports and Kobe, which owns one of them, Kobe Airport, as an example, an empirical analysis was conducted using a nested logit model and micro data. The result of the basic model shows that passengers living in Kobe prefer the Kobe Airport when compared to passengers living in other cities. An additional analysis based on a questionnaire survey revealed that a certain percentage of respondents choose Kobe Airport because they love it, meaning that the non-economic factor of attachment influences passengers’ decisions. The results of this research suggest that enhancing attachment to an airport might be a possible idea for policy makers of airport cities to increase their passengers.

AIRPORT ALoSP AND INTEGRATED RISK APPROACH FOR SSPs

This work proposed the development of a methodology for risk management in airports for ICAO’s State Safety Programmes (SSP). To do so we investigated the nature of the airport safety events occurred in busiest Brazilian airports and proposed a risk index capable to provide the Acceptable Level of Safety Performance (ALoSP) ICAO demands to their signatory States. The approach allowed us to rank airports per their risk in relation to the ALoSP calculated and proposed State optimized regulatory actions to where the risk is. Research found the high concentration on risk recurrence among 31 airports. Only 4 concentrated 30% of all the recurrence of risk, 8 were responsible for 50% and 17 represented approximately 80% of the total risk load in Brazilian airport operations. Five groups of airports are proposed as per their safety performance (Safety+2, Safety+1, Neutral, Safety-1 and Safety-2). Their measured performance showed statistically significant differences. Safety+1 group presented a safety performance 1.49 times better than ALoSP and 3.52 times better than worst group of airports (Safety-2). The Safety+2 group is 3.76 times safer than ALoSP and 8.88 times safer than Safety-2 group. Safety-1 group presented a risk level 1.51 times higher than ALoSP and Safety-2 performed 2.35 times riskier than the ALoSP. This matrix way of problem solving brings more effectiveness and rationality to the SSP’s, amplifying their effectiveness.

Analysing spending behaviour for different airline tourists: Evidence from Taiwanese tourists travelling to North-East Asia

This study investigates the spending behaviours of Taiwanese outbound tourists travelling to Japan or Korea and explores the differences between various airline travellers. 432 travellers were analysed and found that their spending behaviours were quite different at destinations. The seemingly unrelated regressions model was further employed and the results suggested that the impacts of trip characteristics and personal socio-demographics on various levels of travel expenditures vary somewhat across different types of airline users, and tourist consumption behaviours at destinations are partially subject to prepaid expenditures. Implications for the aviation and tourism industry are discussed.

PERCEPTIONS AND ATTITUDES OF AIRLINE EMPLOYEES TOWARDS DIVERSITY. A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

As the world tourism market is continuously changing, travel by air is considered the most widespread mode of mass international tourism. Considering new ways of management that airlines need to adopt in order to have a well trained and qualified management team, this survey explored the attributes of airline employees and their interactions with diverse customers, and identified the sufficient role of employees’ training and the advantages of diversity management. Simple random sampling method was applied to gather 309 airline employees’ questionnaires on their attitudes towards diversity. Descriptive and inductive analyses were used in order to present the obtained data. Principal Component Analysis was conducted to predefine three factors. Pearson correlation coefficient was applied to present the direction of the relationship between extracted factors and employee’s occupational status. Authors’ findings emphasise that airline employees seek a workplace with a friendly atmosphere that respects the diversity of employees and customers and they in their turn support airlines to operate over the comfort zone in order to achieve organisation’s goals and customers’ satisfaction. As the world keeps advancing, planning a diversity strategy should be the first step any modern-day organisation should explore prior to embarking anything related to a diverse workplace.

DEVELOPING INDICATORS FOR CAPTURING THE AIRPORTS DYNAMICS IN REGIONAL AND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT: EVIDENCE FROM GREECE

Air transport is an aspect of the transportation and communication sector, it is a capital and technology intensive component of the national economies, and it plays an important role in communication and trade, in tourism development, and generally in the economic and regional development. The major role of air transport in the support of distant communication makes it a valuable tool for the strategic planning and innovative marketing in tourism, especially for tourism policies addressed to international markets. Within this context, this paper studies air transport in Greece and particularly the regional dimension of the Greek air transport, by excluding the metropolitan airports of Athens and Thessaloniki. The paper examines the factors that determine the attractiveness of the Greek regional airports on data referring to air traffic statistics and on available spatial and tourism information. For measuring the dynamics of the regional airports in Greece in regional development, the paper introduces a composite index, which computes passenger-traffic change between time periods by considering an airports’ classification. Next, for measuring the airport dynamics in tourism development, an index is introduced in terms of the international arrivals and overnights per region. The results of applying the proposed indices comply with the observations of the common practice and they seem sufficient to be used in other areas of application. The overall approach provides a novel measure for air transport studies and it illustrates the contribution of the small and regional airports to tourism and regional development in Greece.

IMPROVING AIR PASSENGERS’ EXPERIENCE DURING FLIGHT DISRUPTION: THE CASE OF ENFORCING THE DENIED BOARDING REGULATIONS (DBRs) AT CHIOS AIRPORT “OMIROS”

Over the past few decades, air travel is no longer considered a luxury, but a commodity, as passengers are faced with the choice of traveling to various destinations at a lower cost and higher safety than ever before. Nevertheless, passengers’ overall experience does not meet their expectations about excellent customer service, as flying results in various problems. This article focuses on the importance of understanding and improving aviation consumers’ experiences of disruption at Chios Airport by investigating the implementation of the regulation known as the Denied Boarding Regulations (DBRs). The results show that passengers are unaware of their legal rights and dissatisfied with the outcome of their complaints concerning the main sources of disruption: flight delay/cancellation denied boarding, and baggage delay, loss, or damage. Furthermore, “refund of flight cost”, “rescheduling/rebooking (free)”, “financial compensation”, “information on legal rights” and “flight status information” are critical factors for delayed or cancelled flights.

TRANSNATIONAL REPRESENTATION BY EUROPEAN WORKS COUNCILS IN THE PASSENGER AIRLINE INDUSTRY

Mergers and acquisitions have reduced the number of European Works Councils (EWCs) in the airline industry over the past two decades. In addition, start-up low-cost airlines have been reluctant to form EWCs. Only 5 of the 11 eligible transnational passenger airlines have established EWCs. This limited number of airline EWCs reduces airline employees' opportunity to be involved in strategic decision making in areas such as tourism. All of the available EWC agreements provide the opportunity for management and employee member consultation, the offering of opinions, and providing information related to European transnational operations. The Lufthansa Group and the International Airlines Group EWC agreements contain more subject areas for discussion than the Air France-KLM agreement. Only the Lufthansa Group EWC agreement includes the topic of environmental protection.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND AVIATION SAFETY: A STUDY OF AVIATION INDUSTRY

The role of leadership in aviation safety is the subject of great interest. Aviation safety is related foremost to passenger safety, and ultimately to the economy. A single aviation accident can lead to organizational failures due to financial burden and loss of life. Therefore, the role of aviation leader in safety issues needs to be examined. In this article, 300 aviators, both managers and employees, have participated in the survey which utilized the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), and the Nordic Network of Occupational Safety Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50). Three separate organizations were chosen for the study. A quantitative research methodology was used to analyze the research findings. The research results show that the safety level of most of the airlines under the investigation was below the desired level. Likewise, transformational leadership has a higher safety score than any other leadership styles; however, only a few aviation leaders are practising this style. It implies that aviation leaders can adopt a transformational style to reduce air accidents. This research also identified a few core competencies of the aviation leader within the transformational style of leadership. Intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration can contribute to higher aviation safety than any other factors of transformational leadership.

CONSUMER ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOURAL INTENTIONS TOWARDS CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: EVIDENCE FROM THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY

This paper explores consumers’ attitudes and behavioural intentions towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in the airline industry by examining the role of consumers’ perceived values and expectations towards CSR initiatives in the airline industry. Data pertaining to customers in the airline industry is used to determine the role of consumer values and expectations in relation to the attitudes and behavioural intentions towards CSR initiatives. According to results, consumer perceptions of value dimensions and CSR expectations have a significant positive effect on customer attitudes when purchasing services in the airline industry. Results also indicate that customer attitudes have a significant positive relationship with consumers’ purchase intentions in the airline industry. The paper discusses implications for managers and adds to the understanding of CSR initiatives and how they can increase companies’ value proposition.