Joyce M.W. Low

Analysis of the Cargo Service Dynamics in East Asian Airports

This paper examines the effects of primary production and key economic factors on air cargo traffic between 1999 and 2005 in the East Asian airport industry through econometric and clustering analyses. This paper’s findings show that while the relative importance of physical capital to human capital has dramatically risen, adequate provisions and utilizations of physical facilities for landside operations appear to be a more significant driving force for an airport’s cargo traffic performances compared to those of airside operations. Even though cost savings are found to have regained their importance in the recent years, the degree of scale economies has fallen so sharply that airports can no longer rely on size for competitive edge. Nevertheless, there is still a close positive relationship between a nation’s economic development and the volume of cargo traffic at its airport.

Performances linkages between an airport and the Air Cargo Supply Chain — Evidences from Hong Kong and Singapore

This paper explores the inter-relationships among an airportpsilas performances, its operating characteristics and its nationpsilas logistics industry and economic development by introducing and testing the validity of air cargo supply chain operations reference (ACSCOR) model in the light of Singapore and Hong Kong statistics. Common in both economies, the cargo traffic volume of an airport is found significantly influenced by its operating characteristics and the performances of its airfreight industry. The logistics industry, which provides supporting functions such as water, land connections, etc to airfreight industry, has its overall performance positively correlated with the nationpsilas economic performance. Nonetheless, our study detects the various sectors within the Hong Kong logistics industry is more deeply integrated. As such, Hong Kong benefits more from the strong complementary relationship that exists among her land, sea and air transport sectors.

Port choice behavior in Asia — a network perspective

This paper develops a network-based connectivity index to model the port choice of a large independent liner company. The assessment of port preferences is facilitated by supplementing important observational determinants of port competitiveness, such as port charges, turnaround time, annual port calls, operation hours, water depth, trade volume and availability of inter-modal facilities. Applying factor analysis, these port attributes are found to be classified along three broad dimensions - scale economies, efficiency and convenience. The proposed index is then expressed as an additive aggregation of the identified key operating dimensions and of which, port efficiency, followed by scale efficiency, emerges as the most important factors in determining a port success.