Understanding the complexities and challenges of airport performance benchmarking

Abstract

The task of measuring and benchmarking airport performance is one of attempting to collect and standardise data while applying econometric techniques that allow for an ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison. This paper provides a review and critique of the various approaches to measuring and benchmarking airport performance, focusing on measures of productivity and efficiency in particular. The investigation reveals that results of airport benchmarking studies appear to be very sensitive to the definitions of variables, model structure, underlying assumptions and the methodology employed.