50 North American airlines taken into consideration WestJet had the lowest use of secondary airports, at just 15%, whilst Southwest and jetBlue were equal with 19%. The main factor to consider is that there are very few secondary airports within North America once our factors of primary and secondary airports have been taken into account. Communities within North America, particularly the United States, are often larger than, for example, Australian communities. The airports located within the major metropolis regions may be hundreds of kilometres away for these communities, so whilst many airports appear to be smaller airports that offer a lower operating cost to airlines, they are definitely not secondary airports because of the amount of people within the community that utilise the airport once the service was made available.
Figure : Ratio of Primary & Secondary Airports in South America The trend seems to continue within the South America region because this region also appears to be in line with the estimate previously made, as seen in Figure 5 above. Whilst the region does have many small airports located throughout it, the distance away from a larger airport within a metropolis is simply too much to classify as accessible and therefore many of these small airports are classed as primary airports. These airports may, however, just serve as a ‘feeder’ airport to another airport where the passenger is able to continue their journey. However as the low-cost carrier model is focused on point-to-point services this also happens and many airports are linked by more than one other destination.
Figure : Ratio of Primary & Secondary Airports in Asia The Asia region appears to start to deviate away from the trend a little, as seen in Figure 6 above, because of the higher use of primary airports. One explanation for this could be due to the high number of islands within the region on which airports are located. This boosts the primary airport number as it is generally the only accessible airport for those living on that island.
Figure : Ratio of Primary & Secondary Airports in Europe
The European region is the second region where there is a significant deviation from the trend, as seen in Figure 7 above. The reason for this higher usage of secondary airports is because most European cities have developed multiple airports throughout the years and with the expansion of the low-cost carrier industry these airports have had an immense boost in traffic. Throughout Europe it was also seen that low-cost carriers create routes that were