Efficiency Dynamics of Turkish Airports: A Non-Radial Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) Malmquist Productivity Index Analysis
This study employs a non-radial SBM-Malmquist Productivity Index to analyze 50 Turkish airports from 2021 to 2025, revealing that while major hubs maintain efficiency, overall productivity is driven primarily by technological change rather than managerial improvements, highlighting the need for better capacity utilization and digital infrastructure to support regional recovery.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Airports are more than just gateways for travelers; they are complex engines of regional development, economic integration, and global connectivity. For a nation to thrive in the modern world, its airports must operate with precision, turning massive investments in runways and terminals into actual movement of people and goods. However, measuring how well these airports perform is surprisingly difficult. Traditional methods often assume that if an airport is efficient, it can simply scale everything up or down in perfect proportion, like turning a volume knob. In reality, airport infrastructure is rigid. A runway cannot be shortened just because fewer planes are landing, and a terminal cannot be instantly shrunk if passenger numbers drop. This rigidity creates "slacks," or unused capacity, which standard measurement tools often ignore, leading to an overly optimistic view of performance. To get a true picture, researchers need a method that accounts for these wasted resources, measuring not just how close an airport is to its best possible state, but also how much of its potential is left sitting idle.
In a recent study focused on Türkiye, researchers applied this more rigorous approach to understand how the country's airports have fared during the critical years of recovery following the global pandemic. The study examined fifty operational airports across the nation from 2021 to 2025, a period marked by shifting travel patterns and a struggle to return to pre-crisis levels. The researchers used a specialized analytical framework that treats each airport as a distinct unit of production, comparing their inputs—such as runway length, terminal size, and parking spots—against their outputs, including passenger numbers, aircraft movements, and cargo traffic. Unlike older models that might overlook inefficiencies caused by unused space, this method directly penalizes airports for having more capacity than they are using. It then tracks how productivity changes over time, breaking those changes down into two distinct drivers: improvements in how well managers use existing resources, and shifts in the technological frontier, which represent broader industry advancements or infrastructure upgrades.
The results reveal a starkly divided landscape within the Turkish aviation sector. While the country's two largest hubs, Istanbul Airport and Sabiha Gökçen Airport, along with the tourism-focused Muğla Dalaman and Zafer airports, managed to reach or exceed the highest standards of productivity, the majority of the network struggled. On average, the fifty airports studied operated at less than half the productivity level of the most efficient units. The data shows that this gap was not primarily caused by poor management. In fact, the efficiency of how managers utilized available resources remained relatively stable across the network. Instead, the main source of the productivity decline was a lack of technological adaptation and capacity utilization. Many regional airports found themselves with massive infrastructure built for a level of traffic that simply did not materialize during the recovery period. The study found that for a significant number of airports, the mismatch between their physical size and their actual traffic was so severe that their productivity scores dropped to near zero, indicating that their facilities were largely sitting empty.
This disconnect between infrastructure and demand created a specific type of inefficiency that the researchers identified as a "managerial effort trap." In several cases, airport managers were actually doing an excellent job of optimizing the resources they had, yet their overall productivity scores remained critically low. This happened because the underlying infrastructure was simply too large for the current demand, creating a surplus of unused runways and terminals that no amount of daily management could fix. The study suggests that the solution for these struggling airports lies not in building more facilities or expecting managers to work harder, but in finding ways to fill the existing capacity. By focusing on stimulating passenger demand, attracting more airlines, and integrating regional airports more closely with major hubs, the system could begin to utilize the infrastructure that currently sits idle. The findings highlight that in the post-pandemic era, the key to airport success is not just having the biggest terminals, but ensuring those terminals are actually full.
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