Sławomir Kalinowski,

Department of Microeconomics,

Faculty of Management,

Poznań University of Economics,

Impact of investment activity on European regional airports performance

Poznań, Poland,

E-mail: slawomir.kalinowski@ue.poznan.pl

ABSTRACT. The accession of ten new countries into the structures of the European Union in May 2004 resulted in their airspaces being covered by the Open Skies agreements. Deregulation and the entry of low cost carriers into these markets contributed to dynamic growth in the air traffic, which most strongly influenced the operations of regional airports. Growing passenger air transport market resulted in an investment projects which enlarged the capacity of the airports. The theory states that after the investment projects have been introduced, there should appear a fall in airports efficiency in a short term perspective. The scale of airport projects oversize the demand just after the project (a new terminal or a new runway). The principal aim of this paper is to examine the impact of investment projects on the efficiency of regional airports in Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia. The German airports’ projects were analysed as the benchmark.

Received: May, 2014

1st Revision: July, 2014

Accepted: October, 2014

DOI:10.14254/2071-789X.2014/7-3/3

JEL Classification: L25

Keywords: airport performance, airport investment projects, deregulation of the air transport.