Literature Review of "GDP/RPK Correlation"

[michaelweinold]

A good overview of existing literature would be very helpful - especially review publications like this one:

You can add them to Zotero. Be sure to record your search parameters!

[dodedic]

Added in a new sheet in the same Excel as the Forecast Literature Review!

[michaelweinold]

@dodedic, please re-check the literature to clarify:

How do publications model air travel demand between two different countries (which, presumably, have different GDP)?

[arebe337]

GDP forecast for every single country: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October

[dodedic]

Use GDP forecast for all countries until 2029, then scale with continental growth rate up to 2050.

[dodedic]

It would seem that for those papers where there is something to find they mostly talk about "air passenger traffic of country" which is still quite a broad term.
I have also found the term "enplanements" as a PAX measure, but through context it seems that most studies from the GDP/RPK literature review actually take in- & outgoing traffic, so PAX handled by airports of that country throughout the year.

[dodedic]

@michaelweinold @arebe337

I went over this again as discussed to figure out the best way to scale PAX demand on international routes.

Since the "main drivers" of RPK increase from GDP growth are factors such as increased business travel and disposable income, and together with the fact that sources from the literature review above cite "embarkments" as the throughput measure for increased air travel demand I would argue to only scale the outgoing flights with the GDP of the departure country and vice versa on a route.

This should work nicely since on our Aiport-Matrix we will have the AverageDailyFlights for both directions for a route (which is not alway the same number!).

Taking into account a 2:1 correlation from GDP to RPK (IATA) we would do the following for Nigera, Libya and Sudan below, we scale flights from Nigeria by 6.6%, Libya by 15.6% and Sudan by -8.4% for that year.

While this captures the outwards effect of GDP on RPK, it certainly leaves out the inward flow of RPK to a country due to GDP growth...But this is a compromise and I would argue that the outward effect itself is a bigger than the inward.

This model leaves out another factor: The fact that countries have certain leading business/export/import partners in the region and over the world where travel is more likely to happen to. While there are Trade Profiles available from the WTO, I think this might go beyond the scope of a global project as we intend to keep it. It would seem more suited for a national scale of such a air transport forecast.