Airports and Low Cost carriers in the Era of Airline Deregulation: the Sicilian case

Over the last few years, the European liberalization and deregulation processes have involved all aspects of the air transport activity, producing significant change to the supply side of the air transport market. All the European air companies have tried to expand their market share, efficiency, and above all, they have tried to specialise their activity focusing on specific demand targets. As a consequence, even airports have had to change their management activity, increasingly modifying their strategy to attract new carriers and plan new goals, such as, for example, increasing accessibility. The aim of this work is to analyze the Italian air transport market after the deregulation process, and its implications for airports, in particular in peripheral areas such as Sicily. This paper is set out as follows. After the introduction, the second section illustrates the consequences of airline liberalization on the Italian market. The third part describes the regulation of airports. In the fourth section, we examine the influence of the low-cost experience on airport competition. The study ends with a look at Sicilian airports. The conclusions provide indications useful to authorities who need to make decisions regarding the enhancement or construction of new regional airport infrastructures.