Forecasting Passenger Traffic of Socially Significant Air Routes Within the Arctic Region

Abstract

The Russian Arctic is characterised by the poor development of year-round land routes. In these conditions, air transport is the basis of passenger traffic. However, air mobility of the population in the Arctic regions is significantly lower than that of Russia in general. The article substantiates the need to increase transport accessibility of the Arctic by developing an internal network of socially significant air routes. To create a route network plan, it is necessary to forecast passenger traffic on existing and potential air routes within the Arctic region. To this end, a multiple regression model was used to develop a two-level forecasting approach. At the first level, the proposed method was applied to calculate local passenger traffic between remote settlements and the centre of the Arctic region. At the second level, the findings were examined to forecast passenger traffic between the centres of the Arctic regions and the main airport with direct flights to other regions. To predict passenger flows on potential routes, a probabilistic model of the number of flights by one resident per year was constructed based on an analysis of existing socio-economic relations, purpose of the flight and the existing infrastructure at the start and end points of the route. According to the results of forecasting passenger traffic on existing routes, it is necessary to increase the frequency and regularity of local flights by optimising the aircraft fleet in order to increase the population’s air mobility. At the same time, the results of passenger traffic forecasting on potential routes confirmed the need for subsidised direct flights between the centres of neighbouring Arctic regions with certain social infrastructure facilities.