The fortunes of air transport gateways

• An expansion in the gateway functions of secondary and smaller cities over the past decade.
• Increases in the demand for international travel closely associated with changes in gateway role.
• Long range smaller aircraft an important facilitating factor in the change in gateway activity.

The paper explores the idea that the fortunes of some gateway cities are changing as airlines use modern aircraft to respond to new market opportunities. It uses data on inter-city journeys between Australia and Asia to identify a hierarchy of gateway cities, and then shows how the connections between them has changed over the 2000–2013 period. Results show that secondary, and smaller, gateways in both Australia and Asia have played more important roles in passenger movements over this time. In Melbourne in particular, stronger growth in the demand for international travel in that city along with more use made of the smaller long-haul aircraft by airlines, has strengthened its role as a gateway city relative to Sydney. These results confirm that the geography of inter-continental air networks are changing which may have important implications for the air transport roles of some cities in the immediate future.