Airport Slot Allocation And Demand Forecasting For Air And High-speed Rail Integration Service

Due to the substantial growth in air traffic over the last few decades,many airports around the world are operating at full capacity.Airport delay and congestion have become major threats to the aviation industry.The Civil Aviation Administration of China(CAAC)has initiated several measures to reduce airport congestion,including the airport slot allocation reform,air and HSR(AH)integration service among the Beijin-Tianjin-Hebei region and Yangtze River Delta etc.In light of this industrial background,the thesis would quantitatively investigate the following three subproblems:i)the effects of grandfather rights on airlines babysitting behaviors;ii)the efficiency of slot auction in an airport network with demand uncertainty;iii)the travel demand for air and high-speed rail integration service.We aim to contribute to both the academic literature and the industry practice in the following aspects:First,this research examines airlines babysitting behaviors in the presence of grandfather rights under three market structures,i.e.,monopoly,symmetric duopoloy and asymmetric duopoly.A stylized economic model is proposed with analytical results derived.We find that it is not always profitable for an airline to babysit,which depends on travel demand and required slot usage rate.In addition,each airline would babysit fewer slots if there is more competition between the two symmetric duopoly.No airline has an incentive to babysit if there are many competing symmetric carriers.For two asymmetric airlines,the one without cost advantage would choose to babysit.Second,this research addresses the effectiveness of airport slot auction by developing a two-stage model,which distributes slots among competing airlines using an ascending-bid multi-unit auction.Airlines assign different values to slots at peak and off-peak periods,and each carrier has its private(subjective)forecast of future demand.Conditional on the slots available to them,airlines compete in frequency,fare,and aircraft size over a congested airport network.The market outcome under such a scheme is benchmarked to those under an ex ante allocation and an ex post allocation by a social planner.Comparison results suggest that the auction-based scheme is inferior to the other two schemes when there is little fluctuation in demand,whereas the auction-based system scheme is more effective when there is substantial demand uncertainty.Auctioning some grandfathered slots can improve social welfare but the marginal effect may diminish quickly.Third,this research investigates the mode choice behavior of inter-city passengers among air transport,high-speed rail(HSR),and air and high-speed rail(AH)integration services.Stated preference survey has been conducted for four typical city pairs that are located in the Beijing-Guangzhou corridor,China.A modal split model is proposed and calibrated based on the collected survey data.The proposed model is used to identify the key factors affecting passengers' mode choice and to estimate the modal split of future passenger travel demand for some inter-city transportation markets of China.Sensitivity analyses are also performed to reveal the market potential of the AH integration service in China.It has been found:i)when the inter-city travel distance exceeds a threshold,passengers become less sensitive to the connection time of the AH service,ii)the most competitive haul distance for the AH service is between 1200 km and 1600 km,and iii)the en route travel time is the most important factor affecting the market share of the AH service.