Internet Technology and Airport Economic Performance

Dr.Hongwei Jiang, Lecturer, School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

, RMIT University, Melbourne, 3001, Australia. Email: george.jiang@rmit.edu.au

Keywords

Internet Technology, Airport eBusiness, Airport Commerce, Aviation eBusiness

Abstract

Airports are an essential part of the air transportation system. They play a vital role not only within the macro environment of transportation, but also in the process of increasing the quality of life of their regional economies and direct participation in wealth creation.

Historically, publicly owned and generally strictly controlled airports have been treated as "Public Utilities", with public service obligations (Doganis, 1992). Consequently, the economic performance of airports was not given top priority. With widespread airline privatisation and commercialisation, progress toward airport commercialisation and economic performance has grown in importance. Increasingly airports are real enterprises, their goal being long-term profit generation to both sustain independent development and reward stakeholders.

For most airports their application of Internet Technology is a Web site. However this is limited to a marketing presence, or a simple electronic brochure. Most sites are static, incapable of supporting online commerce. A very small number of airports use the Internet to manage internal operations-maintenance, scheduling, billing, purchasing, accounting, and personnel, and still fewer airports are connected electronically to their suppliers and business partners. Overall the Internet's contribution to airport economic performance is insignificant.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the improvement of airport economic performance through Internet Technology. It starts with consideration of airport business models, followed by airport revenue and cost structure, and then analysis of airport economic performance measurement, finally, it provides some solutions for airports and future Internet applications.