Forecasting demand level at developing regional airports

The quantitative evaluation of different structures of the air transport system, particularly with reference to regional poles, is of great interest in order to choose if to re-valorise existing, regional airports in a wider network system or to build new airports. To this aim, a general methodology has been set up, within the research program “Guidelines for planning the development of Italian regional airports”, that includes the relationships between airport catchment areas and traffic zones as well as the assessment of the limits to the airport growth particularly in terms of airside capacity. In the general procedure, the demand estimation is one of the most important elements. Following the proposed approach, in this work time series models have been used to study the potential of Reggio Calabria regional airport (located in the South of Italy); both univariate and multivariate air transport demand ARIMA models are proposed to estimate the demand levels in order to capture both the trend of demand and the effects induced by the different policies adopted at the airport. Particularly, three scenarios have been tested following the current development plan of the airport authorities of Reggio Calabria, in order to verify the limits to the airport growth. The comparison between univariate and multivariate calibrated models shows that both provide satisfactory results.