Competition for long-haul connecting traffic among airports in Europe and the Middle East

This paper analyzes the competitive position of major hub airports in Europe and the Middle East for long-haul connecting traffic. We apply a connection builder to construct competitive flight connections. A stand out feature of the proposed connection builder is the calibration of the model parameters using booking data, composed of actual passenger demand between a given origin and destination (O&D) market. The methodology is applied to measure competition between hubs using flight schedule data to calculate connectivity measures like the number of city-pairs connected via a hub airport. Our results show that the Middle Eastern hubs have improved their competitive position, while the European hubs are more exposed to competition than their Middle Eastern counterparts.