مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

With the 6th largest landmass by country, after Russia, Canada, The United States, China and Brazil, the logistical challenges of the transport industry in Australia are notably considerable. With a GDP of $1.3 trillion (World Bank, 2015) generated by a population of just 23 million residents, primarily concentrated on the Eastern Seaboard (with 80% of the population; including the three largest cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane), domestic freight activity accounts for almost 600 billion tonne-kilometres (btkm) across road, rail, maritime and aviation modes (BITRE, 2014a). This represents an average of 26,000 freight tonne-km/capita, roughly comparable to the US (at 28,000 freight tonne-km/capita). The extensive road, rail, coastal shipping and regional aviation networks from Perth to Adelaide and the Eastern Seaboard, acts in coopetition across a combination of long-haul and short-haul services, including multi-modal activities (rail-road, sea-road, sea-rail, air-road and other combinations).

In total world air freight (both domestic and international) accounts for 188 btkm of all trade (World Bank, 2015a), whilst carrying almost 35% of the $18.3 trillion in global merchandise trade (WTO, 2014). International air freight (including intra-EU) accounts for 87% of all air freight traffic movements (IATA, 2016). Table 1 provides an overview of air freight statistics within significantly large regions. Indonesia (consisting of the world’s largest island system) maintains the highest domestic air freight market proportion at 57.4%, with flights scheduled between Jakarta and nearby islands. Large, populated regions such as the US (49.5%), Russia (36.4%), Brazil (36.3%), China (33.8%) and India (30.8%) manage substantial domestic air freight markets. European domestic air freight statistics (sourced from Eurostat, 2014 and IATA) are based on internal country movements for large nations such as Germany or France and include air freight shipped by truck, however excludes intra-EU traffic under the Single European Sky agreement. Compared to Australia, Canada, with similar geographic, population and economic indicators, also maintains a more sizeable domestic air freight component (28.8%). Of the sample, only Mexico (at 14.1%) has a similar proportion of domestic air freight volumes to Australia (at 15.8%). Factors contributing to the subdued Australian domestic air freight market include a limited number of large urban centres, with significant population aggregation on the east coast; extensive road, rail and shipping networks (with the nation’s “girt by sea” status); a combination of service and capacity utilisation challenges and a limited manufacturing base of premium and/or heterogeneous products. The objective of this paper is to investigate and discuss the challenges of domestic air freight inAustralia. We aim to provide evidence on why domestic air freight in Australia has continued to stall (which is in stark contrast to other markets such as the U.S. or Asia/Pacific) and revealing important determinants of air freight that can be used for demand analysis globally. Section 2 reviews the literature on the methodology to be used for the trade flow analysis, the gravity model, as applied to the research field of air transport. Section 3 provides a contextual overview of the Australian domestic air freight market. Section 4 then details the data used for the analysis and methodology of the gravity model, with discussion of the investigation forming Section 5. Section 6 provides a summary of the findings and some conclusive thoughts.