A cointegration analysis of bilateral air travel flows: The case of international travel to and from the United States

• This paper examines the dynamic determinants of bilateral international air travel flows.
• The paper finds a strong linkage between economic growth and air travel demand.
• The real exchange rate has little impact on the bilateral air travel flows.
• The 9/11 market shock has short- and long-run effects on bilateral air travel flows.

Demand for international air travel has risen over the past decade causing international visitation to the US to reach a record high in 2012. This paper assesses the dynamic impacts of GDP, exchange rate, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on bilateral air travel flows between the US and its 11 major travel and trading partners. An autoregressive distributed lag modeling approach is employed to estimate short- and long-run relationships between variables. Long-run results demonstrate foreign GDP as the major determinant of demand for inbound travel to the US and US GDP is a crucial factor affecting demand for outbound travel from the US. These findings support a strong linkage between economic growth and demand for international air travel. The real exchange rate has relatively little impact on the bilateral air travel flows. The US dollar appreciation against foreign currencies is found to reduce demand for inbound travel to the US, while having mixed effects on outbound travel from the US. In the short-run, economic growth tends to be a primary factor influencing international travel flows to and from the US. The 9/11 market shock has a detrimental short- and long-run effect on the bilateral air travel flows, implying that the impact of 9/11 is prolonged in international air travel markets.