Assessment of Airports: An Expert View Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Analysis.

Abstract

The airport assessment gains its importance in recent time due to the competitive terrane along with the shift in airport ownership patterns. An effective airport assessment process helps identify which airports are most suited to provide continuous air travel services, instructing authorities to monitor investment utilization, reduce operating costs, increase market share. It also gives airport administrators a wealth of information about their relative strength and weakness in comparison to other rivalry airports. Given that most research focused on evaluating airport performance from the perspective of passengers, the present study made an attempt to gain insight from the expert point of view by applying Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. By surveying the experts who possess the required knowledge and expertise from the field of aviation, and by performing the pairwise comparison, the weight of importance of each criterion for airport assessment is calculated. And based on the criteria the two airports in Kerala (Cochin International Airport and Calicut International Airports) under consideration are evaluated and ranked. It is found that the passenger service is the most important criteria of airport assessment and the Cochin International Airport is ranked first compared to Calicut International Airport.