An analysis of resident & non-resident air passenger behavior 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.