IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v30y2013icp117-124.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A strategic approach for improving rural air transport in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Grubesic, Tony H.
  • Murray, Alan T.
  • Matisziw, Timothy C.

Abstract

Commercial air transport in rural and remote areas of the United States has a long history. After the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, carriers were free to serve any cities and routes they wished. In anticipation of carriers gravitating toward large urban markets, the Essential Air Service (EAS) program was created to maintain commercial service in smaller and more geographically isolated locales throughout the United States. EAS has been continuously funded since 1978, but has recently attracted the attention of many fiscal hawks. Serving only six passengers per flight, on average, with costs approaching $200 million, there are long held concerns that EAS is a poor use of federal monies. The purpose of this paper is to highlight costs of the EAS program and identify systemic inefficiencies in the allocation of EAS resources. We show that service redundancies exist, with EAS markets being cannibalized by both peer EAS airports and other commercial alternatives. Further, we highlight strategic consolidation possibilities for EAS allocations and services, facilitating federal appropriations reduction without sacrificing existing geographic service needs.

Suggested Citation

  • Grubesic, Tony H. & Murray, Alan T. & Matisziw, Timothy C., 2013. "A strategic approach for improving rural air transport in the United States," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 117-124.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:30:y:2013:i:c:p:117-124
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2013.09.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X13001376
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tranpol.2013.09.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grubesic, Tony H. & Wei, Fangwu, 2013. "Essential Air Service: a local, geographic market perspective," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 17-25.
    2. Reynolds-Feighan, Aisling & McLay, Peter, 2006. "Accessibility and attractiveness of European airports: A simple small community perspective," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 313-323.
    3. Grubesic, Tony H. & Wei, Fangwu, 2012. "Evaluating the efficiency of the Essential Air Service program in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1562-1573.
    4. Grubesic, Tony H. & Matisziw, Timothy C. & Murray, Alan T., 2012. "Assessing geographic coverage of the essential air service program," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 124-135.
    5. Bennett, Vivienne L. & Eaton, David J. & Church, Richard L., 1982. "Selecting sites for rural health workers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 63-72, January.
    6. Matisziw, Timothy C. & Lee, Chieh-Lung & Grubesic, Tony H., 2012. "An analysis of essential air service structure and performance," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 5-11.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tony Grubesic & Ran Wei & Alan Murray & Fangwu Wei, 2016. "Essential Air Service in the United States," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 39(1), pages 108-130, January.
    2. Wu, Hanjun & Hong Tsui, Kan Wai & Ngo, Thanh & Lin, Yi-Hsin, 2020. "Impacts of aviation subsidies on regional wellbeing: Systematic review, meta-analysis and future research directions," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 215-239.
    3. Alan T. Murray, 2016. "Maximal Coverage Location Problem," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 39(1), pages 5-27, January.
    4. Yongha Park & Morton E O’Kelly, 2017. "Exploring accessibility from spatial interaction data: An evaluation of the Essential Air Service (EAS) program in the contiguous US air transport system," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(4), pages 930-951, April.
    5. Wittman, Michael D., 2014. "Public funding of airport incentives in the United States: The efficacy of the Small Community Air Service Development Grant program," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 220-228.
    6. Calzada, Joan & Fageda, Xavier, 2014. "Competition and public service obligations in European aviation markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 104-116.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tony Grubesic & Ran Wei & Alan Murray & Fangwu Wei, 2016. "Essential Air Service in the United States," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 39(1), pages 108-130, January.
    2. Wu, Hanjun & Hong Tsui, Kan Wai & Ngo, Thanh & Lin, Yi-Hsin, 2020. "Impacts of aviation subsidies on regional wellbeing: Systematic review, meta-analysis and future research directions," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 215-239.
    3. Yongha Park & Morton E O’Kelly, 2017. "Exploring accessibility from spatial interaction data: An evaluation of the Essential Air Service (EAS) program in the contiguous US air transport system," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(4), pages 930-951, April.
    4. Wei, Fangwu & Grubesic, Tony H., 2016. "The pain persists: Exploring the spatiotemporal trends in air fares and itinerary pricing in the United States, 2002–2013," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 107-121.
    5. Joshua Hall & Amanda Ross & Christopher Yencha, 2015. "The political economy of the Essential Air Service program," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 147-164, October.
    6. Koo, Tay T.R. & Hossein Rashidi, Taha & Park, Jin-Woo & Wu, Cheng-Lung & Tseng, Wen-Chun, 2017. "The effect of enhanced international air access on the demand for peripheral tourism destinations: Evidence from air itinerary choice behaviour of Korean visitors to Australia," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 116-129.
    7. Wittman, Michael D., 2014. "Public funding of airport incentives in the United States: The efficacy of the Small Community Air Service Development Grant program," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 220-228.
    8. Mueller, Falko, 2021. "Accessibility for money? An evaluation of subsidized air transport services in Europe and the United States," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 153-164.
    9. Fangwu Wei & Tony H. Grubesic, 2015. "A Typology of Rural Airports in the United States: Evaluating Network Accessibility," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 45(1), pages 57-85, Spring.
    10. Salesi, Vinolia Kilinaivoni & Kan Tsui, Wai Hong & Fu, Xiaowen & Gilbey, Andrew, 2022. "Stakeholder perceptions of the impacts of aviation subsidies in the South Pacific Region," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    11. Wittman, Michael D. & Allroggen, Florian & Malina, Robert, 2016. "Public service obligations for air transport in the United States and Europe: Connectivity effects and value for money," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 112-128.
    12. Grubesic, Tony H. & Wei, Fangwu, 2013. "Essential Air Service: a local, geographic market perspective," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 17-25.
    13. Allroggen, Florian & Wittman, Michael D. & Malina, Robert, 2015. "How air transport connects the world – A new metric of air connectivity and its evolution between 1990 and 2012," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 184-201.
    14. Fuellhart, Kurt & Dai, Liang & Grubesic, Tony & Derudder, Ben, 2021. "The U.S. Essential Air Service Program and SARS C0V-2, 2019–2020," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    15. Grubesic, Tony H. & Wei, Fangwu, 2012. "Evaluating the efficiency of the Essential Air Service program in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1562-1573.
    16. Calzada, Joan & Fageda, Xavier, 2014. "Competition and public service obligations in European aviation markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 104-116.
    17. Kinene, Alan & Granberg, Tobias Andersson & Polishchuk, Valentin & Rydergren, Clas, 2020. "Decision Support for an Optimal Choice of Subsidised Routes in Air Transportation," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    18. Wei, Fangwu & Grubesic, Tony H., 2015. "The dehubbing Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG): A spatiotemporal panorama," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 85-98.
    19. Kim, Amy M. & Ryerson, Megan S., 2018. "A long drive: Interregional airport passenger “leakage” in the U.S," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 237-244.
    20. Alan T. Murray, 2016. "Maximal Coverage Location Problem," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 39(1), pages 5-27, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:30:y:2013:i:c:p:117-124. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.