The development of transfer passengers at key international airports

Kurzfassung

Data on the percentage of transfer passengers at airports are usually not available from offi-cial sources but might be useful for many occasions and analyses, such as assessments of airport cost drivers, airport planning and forecasting, lobbying and policymaking, or just airport categorization. To fill this data gap, we have developed a methodology to derive transfer passenger shares at the airport level from so-called ‘segment split data’ provided by the Sabre-MI (Market Intel-igence) database. This database, which is compiled from MIDT data and estimates for non-CRS bookings, is widely used by airlines, airports, researchers and consultants for market analyses. In the ‘leg-flow module’, the database can split the total number of departing passengers at the airport level into local, beyond, behind and bridge passengers. While the former two groups of passengers do not change planes at all, or at other airports only, the latter two are counted as transfer passengers at the airport in question. Comparisons e.g. with Eurostat indicate that the quality of the underlying Sabre-MI segment data – and hence our estimations for the transfer rates – should be relatively good. We used the methodology to map the development of transfer traffic worldwide, comparing the years 2002 and 2016, and to identify the world’s leading transfer airports and regions and any significant shifts. At an aggregated, worldwide level, transfer passenger volumes grow only slightly, while direct flying is getting more and more popular. The results further show lower transfer rates and global transfer market shares for most of the largest U.S. hubs in 2016 compared to 2002, as well as an increasing role of the BoGu (Bosporus-Gulf) hubs in global transfer traffic. The main European hub airports show rela-tively stable results.