How to assess the percentage of transfer passengers at airports?

Kurzfassung

Data on the percentage of transfer passengers at airports are hardly available from official sources. However, such information can be useful for various analyses, such as assessments of airport cost drivers, lobbying and policymaking, or just airport categorization. We show how so-called segment split data provided by the Sabre-ADI (Airport Data Intelligence) database, which are compiled from MIDT booking data and estimates for non-CRS bookings, can be used to estimate transfer rates at the airport level. Hereby, segment-split means that the total of departing passengers at the airport level can be split by 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. We briefly discuss the reliability of the Sabre-ADI dataset and then conclude with a short use case showing the development of the transfer rate over time at selected airports.