Measuring and Ranking Efficiency of Major Airports in the United States Using Data Envelopment Analysis

An airport is an important piece of infrastructure in air transportation system. This project focuses on measuring and ranking the efficiency of airports in the United States using the basic DEA, Ranking DEA, Goal programming and DEA and TOPSIS.

In general, airport authorities of relatively inefficient airports are trying to benchmark the operational strategies of efficient airports. This project focuses on evaluating hub airports in the United States.

ATL, LAX, and MEM airports are relatively efficient among forty four hub airports in the United States based on the performances and airport facilities of the 2000 year when the results of all applied methods in this project, the basic DEA ranking, the Cross Efficiency ranking, the Andersen-Petersen ranking and TOPSIS ranking method, are compared. The implication of this project is that airport authorities in the United States would benchmark these three airports to maximize operation and management efficiency for their airports. In general, most of the airports are handling passengers and freight. Therefore, ATL and LAX would be the most efficient hub airports in the United States. The capacities of airport facilities and more appropriate input data like financial data should be considered in the follow up research.