Impact of airline alliance terminal co-location on airport operations

Abstract

Many airports around the world have co-located or are in the process of reallocating alliance aligned carriers to their designated terminals or terminal areas, to promote flight connectivity, common user facilities and airport-airlines relationships. While operational and financial benefits on the part of the airlines have been made clear by existing literatures on airline alliances and alliance-hubbing, but the tangible benefits to be derived by airport operators are less obvious.

In order to better understand why airport operators have come onboard with the concept in the first place, this paper considered existing cases of London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Tokyo Narita Airport. These airports were selected for the qualitative case analysis primarily because of the relevance of their operating environment (i.e. alliance network hubs) and their early implementation of alliance terminal co-location. A quantitative case study on Sydney Airport – representing airports without the implementation of the concept, was conducted to determine if alliance terminal co-location could yield operational and financial merits for the airport operator similar to those observed at the sample airports.