Regional aviation for local development in the context of public funds investment

This article presents an analysis of the effectiveness of public support for the sustainable development of local communities. It contains a review of the literature on aviation relationships with local development and business models of regional carriers. Research includes a case study and a comparative analysis of this type of support in the EU environment. Therefore, the collected data came from own research and information provided by the European Commission. The research question posed in the paper concerns the legitimacy and efficiency of this type of support in the context of the legal framework, case study and statistical European analyses. The results make it possible to draw conclusions with respect to reporting such public services, average costs, as well as differences in interpretations of state aid legislation in this area. The key contribution of the paper to the scholarly literature is efficiency assessment for this type of support and identification of weaknesses in the data published by the European Commission on PSO. The summary presents recommendations for decision-makers and potential directions for further research.