The evolution of air transport networks and impacts on shortest travel times between NUTS-3 regions – a case study for intra-European trips originating in Germany

Abstract

The European air transport market has evolved over the past decades at an amazing pace. Key developments include the rise of the low cost carriers (LCCs), originally at regional and military conversion airports and now also at the larger secondary airports and hubs, the withdrawal of network carriers from non-hub routes and a widely disappearance of classical regional air services with turboprops. We hypothesize that all these developments have had impacts on travel times between European regions. In this paper, we present a methodology to analyse shortest car and air travel times including a combination of both modes for trips between European regions. We apply our model for travel from Germany to Europe on the level of NUTS-3 regions (districts and larger cities) in order to assess on which routes air transport provides a travel time benefit over individual motor car traffic. Moreover, we compare the development of travel times between 2000 and 2017 to show how the evolution of the air transport network has influenced shortest travel times. With the model, the authors address the following questions: First, we assess for which region pairs and distances combinations of car and scheduled air transport offer travel time savings over trips by car only. Second, we evaluate how the evolution of the European air transport network has changed shortest travel times for trips from each German NUTS-3 region to Europe between 2000 and 2017.