Thank you to Amy M. Kim, Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, University of British Columbia, who presented Long-distance airport passenger markets and their implications for aviation emissions at the Transportation Seminar Dec. 1, 2023.
Abstract: Air services and resulting emissions at airports of different sizes and functions are not expected to be uniformly impacted by price-based environmental policies such as carbon offset charges, carbon taxes and carbon credits. To understand variabilities, we empirically map the relationship between airfare (a proxy for price-based policies), passenger demand, airline service decisions, and aviation emissions on several air routes originating from a small and a major hub airport in the US Midwest. We find that although emissions appear largely unresponsive to changes in airfare, airfare changes are far more influential at the small airport compared to the major hub. The potential implications for airport passenger markets, especially in regions where smaller airports are concerned about passenger “leakage” to neighboring large hub airports, are discussed.
Bio: Dr. Kim’s (she/her) research program in transportation systems analysis focuses on the operations of multimodal networks, and supporting resource allocation strategies across long-distance systems. She aims to better inform the planning of transportation systems that are more adaptable and resilient to a changing world, collaborating with researchers across disciplines in contexts such as strategic planning for wildfire evacuation, transportation infrastructure decisions under climate change impacts, and integrated analysis of air and ground transportation. Dr. Kim received her MS and PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and her BASc in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo. Prior to joining UBC in March 2021, she was a faculty member at the University of Alberta. Between her MS and PhD studies, she worked in the engineering consulting practice in California and British Columbia.