Distributional Consequences of Airport Congestion Pricing

Abstract:     
This paper investigates the distributional impact of airport congestion pricing on commercial, commuter, miscellaneous, and general aviation. It extends Daniel's (1995) stochastic bottleneck model in three significant directions by allowing for non-homogeneous aircraft operating and time costs, differentiation in preferred times of operation, and elastic demand. The model also includes endogenous, intertemporal traffic adjustments in response to queuing delay and fees. The relative costs of queuing and schedule delays are estimated using data from Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Simulations show equilibrium traffic patterns, queuing delays, schedule delays, congestion fees, airport revenues, and changes in surplus for each category of aviation.

JEL Classification: L93

working papers series