Multivariate analysis of passenger and aircraft demands of airports in Turkey

Technological developments, population growth, international agreements, government regulations and globalization let the aviation industry make relatively fast progress. Since air transportation is the safest, the fastest and the most comfortable way of transport, it attracts passengers from other modes of transportation. Besides, long travel distances like intercontinental transportation have accelerated both the number of passengers and the amount of freight transported by air. In order to handle the increasing passenger and freight demand, airport facilities must be planned accurately. Design of airport facilities including terminal building/buildings, runways and aprons is directly related to air traffic demand. This demand is determined by generating forecasts. When air traffic demand is specified, it is compared with airport capacity. In this way, need for additional or new facility construction is decided.In this study, time series analysis was applied to domestic air passenger data of Adnan Menderes, Antalya and Esenboğa Airports in Turkey during the period 2001-2010. After the analyses, domestic air passenger data for the next five years were predicted. Then, passenger and aircraft data were compared with socioeconomic parameters such as import, export, foreign trade volume, car ownership, number of buses and number of internet subscribers.