پیامدهای هزینه های زیست محیطی بر تقاضای مسافر هوایی برای مدل های کسب و کار خطوط هوایی مختلف

Various environmental measures, including both regulations and fiscal instruments, have been used at airports globally to reduce the impacts of aircraft noise as well as aircraft engine emissions. Internationally, it is recognized that the costs of environmental and social externalities of air transport must be internalized and paid for by the aviation industry and its users. The use of noise related charges or taxes, which theoretically should be based on their respective social costs, has been proved to be effective at some European airports. This research aims to investigate the impacts of environmental costs, through environmental charges, on air passenger demand for different airline business models. The paper presents the mathematical models measuring the social costs of aircraft noise and engine emissions as a basis for setting up environmental charges. Six intra-European short-haul routes in two city pairs, namely London–Amsterdam and London–Paris, are selected for the empirical analysis. The environmental charges are then hypothetically applied to airlines with two different business models, full service carriers (British Airways and Air France-KLM) and low cost airlines (EasyJet). The results show that the potential percentages of demand reduction for both leisure and business passengers would be higher for Easyjet's markets, although with less environmental cost per passenger.

Over the years, increasing attention has been paid to the sustainable development of the aviation sector (Caves, 1994a, Caves, 1994b and Fawcett, 2000). Environmental and social concerns are gradually posing limitations to the growth of the air transport industry. Although the global economic downturn and political turmoil of increased global security has caused a decline in the number of flights and passengers over the past years, these environmental concerns still remain valid. Nevertheless, it is widely recognized now that the costs of these externalities must be internalized (European Commission, 1999 and European Commission, 2002). For this reason, the sustainable development of the environment is a significant issue that should be concerned immediately. Two of the most important externalities generated from commercial flights are noise nuisance and aircraft engine and ground access vehicle emissions. Of these two, noise nuisance has the largest impact on the community surrounding airports, while engine emissions have both local and global impacts on air quality and greenhouse gases, respectively. Noise causes both annoyance (nuisance) and health effects, for instance sleep deprivation, (Franssen et al., 2004) stress and hypertension (Jarup et al., 2005). More and more, airports in the world, often forced by governments, are applying different types of noise management measures that range from noise abatement procedures to limits on the total noise allowed (Lu and Morrell, 2006). Among these measures are night flight restrictions and curfews, night quotas, and

Facing the competitive air transport markets and stringer environmental measures applied at airports, airlines with different business models are bound to find a balance among costs, fares and demand for sustainable growth. This research has selected the well-developed intra-European short-haul routes for the case studies. The results have shown the impacts of environmental costs on passenger demand, if the environmental costs are passed on to consumers through environmental charges on airlines. The results show that the potential percentage of demand reduction would be higher for EasyJet's markets. Because of operating from large hub airports, British Airways and Air France-KLM produce higher noise social costs than Easyjet (Lu and Morrell, 2006). Moreover, Easyjet's fleet tends to produce better fuel efficiency due to more recent aircraft/engine combinations. However, with less environmental costs per passenger, Easyjet is estimated to suffer more from environmental charges because of their lower fares than those of full service carriers. While implementing environmental charges or any measure which internalizes the external costs, policy makers should wisely find a balance between economic growth and environmental impacts.