Airport Benchmarking and Spatial Competition: a Critical Review

During the last two decades the European airport industry is liberalised and turned to competitive market environment. This fact attracts an increasing scientific and practical interest to analysis of airport efficiency and its determinants, as well as different aspects of airport competition. This paper contains a critical review of existing researches in these two areas – airport efficiency and spatial competition among airports. We analysed modern approaches to airport benchmarking, their advantages and shortcomings, and systematised a wide range of related academic studies. We paid special attention to empirical researches of spatial competition as a factor affecting airport efficiency. Despite the fact of a well-developed theory of spatial competition and signs of its growing effects in the airport industry, we discovered a lack of studies devoted to the relationship between airport efficiency and spatial competition.