The European air transport system is undergoing significant modifications due to the liberalisation process, the growth of demand for air services and the technological innovations. In particular, regional airports have become one of the fastest growing sectors of the European aviation industry in recent years. Low-cost carriers regard regional airports as cheap and not congested airports, with unsatisfied air transport demand volumes. Low-cost carriers have the potential to stimulate demand and their low cost fares can also attract passengers from a much wider catchment area. Also the major airlines show a renewed interest for regional airports, because they consider regional airports as spokes that can feed traffic to intercontinental services at their hubs.
Regional airlines in turn are likely to play an increasing role in providing fast and efficient communications around Europe: the flexibility offered by new regional jet aircraft enables provision of services to be more closely matched to demand and new markets can be exploited that are beyond the reach of major carriers. First of all, in this book the role of air transport as a facilitator for regional economic development and the development of new routes from European regional airports are examined. Furthermore, the book analyses methods and models that can simulate future configurations of the air transport system, so that external and internal impacts of innovations, modifications and decisions can be evaluated.
This book, which contains contributions by an international group of academic researchers involved in the air transport field, represents a decision support tool for all the stakeholders of regional airport systems.

Marino Lupi is full professor in Transport at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Bologna, Italy.