Institute of Transportation, MOTC

        In recent years, the number of air passengers has been increasing and the airport has increased the requirements for security examination due to terrorist attacks, resulting in an increase in the necessary operating procedures in the airport and a decline in the level of airport services, and make passengers have poor experience. In the past, most of the research on the time in the airport focused on the analysis of passengers' check-in and boarding time. This study is to investigate the heterogeneity and asymmetry of air passengers' preferences for travel time components at airports. The results of the study let airlines and airports understand passenger preferences, allowing airlines to implement different response measures in accordance with passenger preferences to enhance passenger satisfaction. This questionnaire developed by this study was conducted by means of stated preference (SP) method. The data was modeled by multinomial logit model and latent class logit model to quantify the preferences of travelers at different time and locations. The results of the two models show that passengers prefer to spend less time on the check-in and security examination when the flight is on-time; passengers care about the longer time in check-in, security examination and waiting within the aircraft than expected, so there is heterogeneity of air passengers' preferences for travel time components at airports; there is asymmetry preferences for the time in check-in, security examination and waiting within the aircraft. In addition, passengers are divided into two categories by the latent class logit model. There is a difference between the two types of passengers in travel time components at airports that they care about. One of the two category is a younger and lower-income passenger. They are more concerned about whether there is a longer free time after security examination and prefer to wait out of the aircraft than to wait in the aircraft. The other category is composed of older and high-income passengers; they care about the longer time in waiting out of the aircraft than expected. To sum up, the time in check-in and security examination, the waiting time out of the aircraft, the waiting time within the aircraft and free time after security examination are all factors that passengers will care about. From the results of the two models, it is verified that the difference between the air passengers' preferences for travel time components at airports and the asymmetric preferences for travel time components at airports. The results of latent class logit model can verify the differences in the preferences for travel time components at airports between the passengers of different characteristics.