Is Regulation for Transit Traffic Warranted at Lima’s Airport?

摘要

Jorge Chavez International Airport (JCIA) is Peru’s main airport. At the time of its concession it handled 90% of international O&D traffic. Transit traffic, however, grew tenfold between 2002 and 2012, and now it represents 46% of the international outbound traffic. The fact that a new passenger terminal and a new runway have to be built by 2019 is altering the economic incentives faced by the concessionaire, since they do not receive revenues from transit traffic. In these circumstances, it would be more profitable to design a terminal that discourages this type of traffic. This situation suggests a misalignment between the incentives faced by concessionaire and the public interest, since transit traffic increases air connectivity, one of the goals of transport policy. For the JCIA’s concessionaire, however, these passengers are nothing short of free riders. This inconsistency has the potential of reducing the country’s air connectivity for years. The goal of this paper is to assess if it is convenient for the regulator to authorize the JCIA’s concessionaire to charge a fee for transit passengers (even though this might allow him to obtain economic rents), and if so, whether this fee should be set by the regulator or the market. Results show that there is little to gain from not authorizing the fee and that there is evidence that JCIA faces competition from other airports for transit traffic. This implies that in the event that the fee is authorized, it should not be set by the regulator.