Evaluating Temporal Integration of European Air Transport

Abstract

Europe’s recent strategic aviation research agenda, Flightpath 2050, asks for enabling four hour or less door-to-door travel time for 90% of all Intra-European travelers. To statistically deduce passenger air travel times, this paper presents a spatio-temporal graph search and passenger allocation algorithm that combines aggregated demand data and published flight schedules. The results indicate that 90% of all current Intra-European air ravelers require four hour or less from origin airport to destination airport, rather than from door-to-door. Most passengers require 60-90 minutes to reach their final destination airports, but markets with a travel time etween 90 and 210 minutes experienced greater growth rates. The share of journeys that take a long time to complete is highest for departures in the early morning or around noon. The vast majority of all Intra-European passengers travel direct and the directness of the overall system increased from 2002 to 2012, largely due to the emergence of low cost carriers. The results indicate that the demand structure of European air transport is such that there is only a very limited number of non-revolutionary measures that could make the Flightpath 2050 travel time goal achievable in the near future.