Devising airport groupings for financial benchmarking

• Three clusters are produced for 73 global airports using partial financial indicators.
• Location, international traffic, aircraft size and ownership influence the clusters.
• Cluster analysis is a useful tool for grouping airports to compare performance.

This paper uses cluster analysis to assess whether it might be a useful tool to select airport groups for comparative financial and economic performance studies. The research uses a sample of 73 airports, or airport operators, from all over the world. Nine key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to determine the clusters and the relationship between these clusters and possible explanatory variables is explored. Three clusters are produced which are similar for 2003 and 2010. One consists almost entirely of North American airports, one is dominated by European airports and one has a mixture of European and other (non-North American) airports. It is concluded that such an approach may indeed prove useful, not only just in the financial and economic areas, but with other aspects of airport performance that can be measured with a selection of KPIs.