Air connectivity and spatial effects: regional differences in Europe

The paper studies the determinants of air connectivity in European regions. It takes into account the spatial effects among regions, the different regional characteristics in terms of importance and the impact of the two main airline business models: low-cost carriers and full-service carries. In order to investigate these effects, a spatial econometric model is designed to estimate the determinants of different measures of air connectivity and applied to a data set regarding 284 NUTS-2 European regions for the period 2009–16. A strong spatial effect is found: good connectivity of nearby regions generates lower connectivity in surrounding regions. Moreover, the results indicate that low-cost carries improve air connectivity, particularly in remote regions.