An Analysis of Resident and Non- Resident Air Passenger Behaviour of Origin Airport Choice

Increasing number of air travellers in recent years and the emergence of multi-airport cities throughoutthe world has made the behaviour of travellers regarding the choice of the origin airport evenmore important. analysis of this behaviour helps for a better future planning and development ofcompeting airports as an important element of their demand prediction. in this paper, particularemphasis is stressed on the behaviour of resident and non-resident passengers in choosing betweenthe origin airport through the empirical case study of the two airports of tehran multi-airport system,namely imam khomeini (ikia) and mehrabad international airport (mia) in iran. the 24-hour and one-week survey was conducted in may 2011 and a total number of 2980 questionnaireswere collected from the two airports. binary logit was used to model the origin airport choice ofresident and non-resident travellers from the city of tehran. results show that the difference in thetwo groups is affected by “age”, “income”, “travel destination”, “trip purpose” and “marital status”.further model results show that variables “public access”, “flight frequency” and “airporttax” are more important for non-resident air travellers in choosing their origin airport.