Nordic Air Freight Market Visions for Cargo Business Development from Airport Management view-point -Based on a case study of Swedish LFV Landvetter Airport and their industry network

摘要

Severe financial crisis sweeping the world causes international trade to falldown sharper than expected in 2009. As taking care of goods physicalmovement, the transportation industry has been severely impacted and the airfreight business with it. Adding into this equation changes by declining yield,violent oil price fluctuations and decreasing demand, followed by routing cutoffsand over-capacity of airlines, airports are directly influenced. Airlinebusiness changes cause fewer cargo volumes, resulting to less airport revenue.At the same time airport management faces airport development requirements,operational challenges, pressure on airport costs and higher uncertainty withregard to future cargo volumes. All this pushes for a mental switch which ishappening in the airline industry right now and the airport managementrecognizes that the competition toughens but that the turbulence also alwayscreates strategic business development opportunities.The research purpose is to recognize how the relevant airport stakeholderspicture the future of air freight development, and to analyze whether theirvisions for the future are aligned. With step-by-step approach, the industrylevel analysis seeks to describe how the Nordic air freight industry looks like;and what are the characteristics of the market place in the light of global tradechanges. The paper structures and analyzes these influences with focus onAirport Management. The second step was to acquire deeper understanding ofthe airport as a specific micro-environment, and LFV as a state-owned airportmanager. A Case study was conducted on Gothenburg-Landvetter Airport(GOT) and within their industry network (stakeholders).For interviews were there is empirical bias for Nordic, especially to Swedishdata. To the certain extend, the results can be considered strongly indicative toall Nordic Airport Management business development units, and much of thediscussion can be of interest to other similar European non-central hub airportThis watermark does not appear in the registered version - http://www.clicktoconvert.comvmanagers, and to those trading in the Nordic market place. LFV aims to usethe outcome of the research as a supporting input for their future businessdevelopment strategy.Theoretical framework builds on the known industry influencers’ reports,expert views, and on existing academic research. To continue to build up theresearch and to assess the strategic industry environment, theoretical toolssuch as the Porter 5-forces analysis and the Stakeholder model are applied.The identified stakeholders are the airlines, export/import industry, shippers,forwarders, integrators, other logistics providers and partners such as airporthandling companies.Literature and experts reviews indicate that airport operations managementis a very specific micro-environment, directly connected and dependant onairline business performance, and airports worldwide are seeking ways todiversify the business opportunities. Forecasts in the beginning of 2009 showthat the airline industry losses will still mount during 2009, but if the currentoil price and 2009 expected lower oil prices will compensate the costs in2009, capacity-related savings may just match the collapse in revenues.Empirical findings of the Case Study also indicate that looking into thefuture, the depression economics may have not hit the air cargo business sohard after all - the first signs of careful positivity and trust for the future forthe airline industry and for the total growth for air transport in the future canbe recognized.Further research results give deeper view to the future development ofstakeholders’ global market visions, the type of future Nordic air cargo, andother important structural changes of air cargo business actors possiblyimpacting cargo airport management and their future strategy.At the company level the research results address LFV Cargo andstakeholder future relationships, provided LFV and airport services,competition, visions for multimodality, visions in changes in airline networksand in airport structures, in pricing and in future demand turbulences.