Mixed logit modelling of airport choice in multi-airport regions

This paper presents an analysis of the choice of airport by air travellers departing from the San Francisco Bay (SF-B) area. The analysis uses the mixed multinomial logit model, which allows for a random distribution of tastes across decision makers. To our knowledge, this is the first application using this model form in the analysis of airport choice. The results indicate that there is significant heterogeneity in tastes, especially with respect to the sensitivity to access time, characterised by deterministic variations between groups of travellers (business/leisure, residents/visitors) as well as random variations within groups of travellers. The analysis reinforces earlier findings showing that business travellers are far less sensitive to fare increases than leisure travellers, and are willing to pay a higher price for decreases in access time (and generally also increases in frequency) than is the case for leisure travellers. Finally, the results show that the random variation between business travellers in terms of sensitivity to access time is more pronounced than that between leisure travellers, as is the case for visitors when compared to residents.