Purpose – This paper aims to explore the use of best practice benchmarking in civil aviation. Design/methodology/approach – Evidence was gathered from two international questionnaire surveys of the top 200 airlines and the top 200 airports. Supplementary evidence included interviews with...

In response to increasing demand, airlines may increase capacity by increasing the frequency of flights or they may choose to increase aircraft size. This may yield operating cost economies. If the airports they operate from are capacity constrained, they will be limited in the extent that they...