Airport performance and service quality: a complexity theory perspective

To remain competitive and economically viable, airports need to optimise their processes without compromising the security, safety and comfort of the passengers. Understanding passenger needs to improve service quality and monitoring airport performance are two aspects of airport management. There is a need to compare the passenger perception of the provided service with actual measurements of the service performance. The potential benefits of a multidimensional approach to performance assessment with service quality is still under researched. This study aims to examine the relationship between airport performance and service quality and understand its role in airport management through a multi-study design.

In the first part, a service quality based operational efficiency metric for airports was computed using a multistage data envelopment analysis (DEA) using input and output parameters such as operational cost, number of terminals, number of employees total revenue, passenger numbers, and service quality data for 107 airports across the world for the year 2019. Further the significant factors determining an airport’s service quality-based efficiency was analysed. The DEA results indicate that inclusion of service quality gave a statistically significant difference in airport efficiency in the given sample. The results also indicated that the factors hub status, average number of flights delayed per day, percent of delayed flights and geographic location were statistically significant in determining an airport’s service quality-based efficiency.

In second part of the study, with the use of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, we established a complexity-based framework that can be used to score an airport’s social and technical complexities. The relationship between an airports social and technical complexities and its participation of airports in some benchmarking programmes, frequency and evaluation of service quality parameters and the importance of service quality was also analysed. According to airport managers, data, communication, and cooperation between airport stakeholders, adequate infrastructure and technical innovations are crucial for airports being technically efficient. Organisational culture, communication of policies and knowledge within employees, cooperation with government and employee union entities were raised as potential sources of social complexities by airport managers