Long distance accessibility by air transportation: a literature review

Air transportation is a mode of transport developed specifically to provide access to long-distance destinations that may otherwise be infeasible or at least more difficult to reach. Accordingly, there are distinct aspects of air travel that require consideration when assessing accessibility by air transportation, which are not addressed in general local accessibility studies. This paper reviews studies of accessibility by air transportation. The studies in question were published in academic journals, and we analysed them using the broad theoretical framework of accessibility of Geurs and van Wee [Accessibility evaluation of land-use and transport strategies: Review and research directions. Journal of Transport Geography, 12(2), 127–140]. We discuss the characteristics of accessibility by air transportation to consider when designing research, as well as trends and knowledge gaps in the existing literature. An important gap is that, while there is a growing interest towards perceived accessibility by air transportation, accessibility measures based on this perspective have not yet been applied yet. Additionally, the literature is largely focused on the transport and land-use components of accessibility as opposed to the individual and temporal components. We finish by discussing the benefits and drawbacks of directly applying conventional accessibility measures for research on accessibility by air transportation, as well as options to modify the temporal component of conventional person-based accessibility measures for better applicability in the air travel context.