The regional airport sustainability trilemma : type-specific tensions among financial performance, environmental responsibility, and societal value

Abstract

Regional airports play an important role in the aviation system, yet many face persistent financial vulnerability, growing environmental pressures, and continued scrutiny over the societal value that may justify public support. Together, these sometimes competing priorities form a sustainability trilemma, whereby progress in one dimension does not necessarily translate into progress in the others. This dissertation investigates how this trilemma differs across regional airport types and what these differences imply for airport management and policy. Based on a latent profile cluster analysis of Western European regional airports, four distinct regional airport types are identified: leading, small, challenged low-cost, and specialised cargo regional airports. Building on this typology, the subsequent bottom-up input-output analysis, two-stage data envelopment analysis, and regression analysis further examine how the strengths and vulnerabilities across the three sustainability dimensions differ between these regional airport types. This demonstrated, for instance, that leading regional airports generally occupy a stronger financial position but do not necessarily perform equally strongly across all environmental dimensions; remote small regional airports may provide important connectivity despite persistent financial constraints; challenged low-cost regional airports combine financial vulnerability with relatively high airline dominance and competitive pressure; and the specialised cargo case illustrates how substantial economic contribution can coexist with comparatively weak local-air-quality efficiency. In a final step, the dissertation explores airport charging as one potential managerial response. More specifically, it examines passenger occupancy as an additional utilisation-sensitive dimension within movement-based charges at uncongested regional airports with heterogeneous traffic. Overall, the dissertation demonstrates that regional airport sustainability is type- and context-dependent. It therefore challenges one-size-fits-all approaches and supports differentiated managerial and policy responses to the specific financial, environmental, and societal tensions associated with different regional airport types and contexts.