Identifying and Prioritising the Factors Affecting the Development of Air Transportation (Case Study: City of Chabahar)

In today's highly competitive world, countries are constantly looking for new methods to maximize their trade for economic and social development. Accordingly, the development of transportation, especially air transportation, is a necessity. Presently in Iran, as in many other parts of the world, air transport is one of the reasons for economic growth and the speed of movement in regional development. In this study, an attempt has been made to study the generalities of air transport development and its influential factors, and in particular, the indicators influencing the development of air transport in the city of Chabahar. This research is developmental in terms of purpose, a survey in terms of method, comparative and polls in terms of analysis, the qualitative in terms of data nature, and cross-sectional in terms of data collection time. The statistical population of this study includes 320 passengers and air transport customers, maintenance staff, flight attendants or pilots, and service employees, 170 of who were selected as a sample by simple random sampling and researched, respectively. To collect data about the research literature, the desk study (review of relevant literature) and in order to confirm the hypotheses and to prioritize the criteria, the Likert scale survey method and AHP technique have been used respectively. The results of the sample t-test showed that the components of employment, knowledge, policy-making, market access, airlines, market and competition issues, aircraft production and access, fair competition, logistics, environmental issues, services, convenient airport location, infrastructure, air transport demand forecasting, and air traffic management are influential on the development of Chabahar air transport. Hierarchical analysis between these criteria showed that from the respondents' point of view, the knowledge criterion is the most important in the development of air transport. The criteria of access to aircraft, infrastructure, air traffic management, airport location, logistics, airlines, demand forecasting, environmental issues, services, policy-making, employment, market access, and market-related issues take precedence, respectively.