Classification of Travel Demand for Air Transport System According to Passengers Demographic Variables by Using Cluster Analysis

Air transport system has always been noteworthy to all walks of life due to having a high potential in transporting passengers and goods. This topic has got a high importance in developing countries in recent years because of slow growth rate of domestic flight's number of passengers. This research has surveyed recognition of different classes of passengers of air transport system in order to identify passenger's habits of air transport system and leading future services of this system based on characteristics of identified groups and finally new foundation in marketing strategies of air transport system. Therefore, in order to gather the required information, a questionnaire was provided based on seven variables of sex, marital status, number of family members, age, education, occupation and income and was offered to air transport passengers. These variables were examined by cluster analysis and finally groups of passengers were classified into 4 clusters. Results showed that the most important parameter in passenger's motivation for using air transport system is occupation of passengers with the importance amount of 1.0. Furthermore, the largest number of users of air transport system is related to people placed in cluster 2 with 38.1% users which contain married people in the age range 25-36 with monthly salary of higher than average.