An AHP approach to airport choice by freight forwarder

Abstract

Choice of airport is a crucial issue from freight forwarder point of view. Freight forwarder takes into account all airports within an acceptable radius, considering supply of airlines. The supply includes total costs, structure of price and quality of connections affecting on transport time of shipment. The goal of this paper is to propose a multi-criteria decision making approach which will help freight forwarders to choose an airport based on selected criteria. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to structure and rate criteria. The approach is illustrated by example based on real data for Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian market. The results in this paper point out that airports and airlines must develop the capacity and flexibility to accommodate changing trends and volumes of cargo in order to attract more demand. The sensitivity analysis reveals what should be improved by airports and airlines in order to attract more customers, which will further lead to more operationally efficient and sustainable cargo services in the region.

Keywords

• Freight forwarder
• Airport choice
• Airline supply
• AHP