The techniques that PDC have developed for analysing the demand for new services have also been applied to the air industry.
Here are some brief details about some projects we have conducted in this area.
Kuala Lumpur International Airport Study
Date: 1996
The new Kuala Lumpur International Airport was due to open on January 1st 1998 in time for the Commonwealth Games to be held in Malaysia in September of that year. The new airport was expected to act as a regional hub and was designed to cater for up to 60 million passengers a year.
Located some 60km from the city centre, the airport would be connected to Kuala Lumpur with new highway and public transport links including a high speed express rail link. Peter Davidson Consultancy (PDC) played a major role in the Public Transport System Study commissioned by the airport authority to forecast demand and make recommendations on public transport infrastructure and service requirements. PDC designed and implemented airport passenger and employee surveys including a major stated preference exercise. The results of these were used by PDC to construct a mode-choice model of landside travel to the airport. The model was successfully calibrated to the base year situation at the existing airport and was used to produce forecasts under different air traffic growth scenarios.
Evaluating Air Route Potential for the Scottish Airports Authority
Date: 1988
The objective of this wide-ranging study was to investigate the demand for passenger air travel in Scotland with particular emphasis on the potential for new direct international services, which would negate the need to change at Heathrow.
In order to provide an effective forecasting methodology, qualitative research was conducted on flights between Glasgow and London to determine key decision making criteria for inclusion in the stated preference game (sp). These attributes were identified as fare level, journey time to destination airport, aircraft type, (turbo-prop or jet) and whether direct or interlining flight.
The sp survey fieldwork was undertaken at Heathrow airport in the Scotland-bound departure lounges using sp-ASK software and lap-top microcomputers to present a quota sample of business and leisure travellers with realistic alternatives to the flight they were about to undertake. The sp was coupled with revealed preference estimation and built into a state-of-the-art disaggregate choice model of Scottish air travel. This was used to forecast ridership and revenue on new air routes.
The project identified a number of potential new air services, which would attract a significant amount of new business and provide commercially viable new routes.