Note de recherches développement du transport aérien en France : une première analyse des aéroports de proximité

The forecasts of air transport growth in France generate some considerations in relation to the capacity of current airport to receive this additional traffic. The authorities for a long time considered the construction of a third Parisian airport. For the hour, this strategy is rather dedicated to the abandonment, or at least still remains in building site. Others recommend the development of neighbourhood airports in order to better distribute the traffic on the whole of the own territory. The object of this article is precisely to clarify the choice of these neighbourhood airports by proposing a taxonomy of the French airports which goes beyond various administrative classifications or from the economic classification suggested by the Directorate-General of the Civil Aviation. This taxonomy is based on criteria of offer, on conditions of spatial accessibility of the various airports, like on socio-economic variables. From the technical point of view, we use the panoply of the methods of data analysis and more particularly the hierarchical ascending clustering as well as the principal components analysis. Classification JEL : R40, C44.