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BITRE | Report 1154.3 Airport catchment analysisThis section presents major findings related to the accessibility of regular scheduledair services in Australia.In this section, accessibility is a general term used to describe the extent to which asystem could be reached by users. It should not to be confused with ‘usability’ whichdescribes how easily a system could be used by any type of user (e.g. timeliness,service frequency, or some measure of the relative ‘connectivity’ provided by othermodes of transport to access the nearest airport).The airport catchment analysis evaluates the ability to access regular scheduledair services by residents in urban centres or localities. An airport generally servespopulations and businesses in its surrounding area. A catchment area is the potentialgeographic areas for drawing passengers (GAO, 2003). The analysis identifies the sizeand location of the target population located within a specified access distance ofone or more airports.The following section outlines the data sources, assumptions and methodology usedfor the analysis.4.3.1 Analysis approachData sourcesTwo data sources were used in the analyses:• A list of all airports providing regional air services in 2005 was extracted from theBTRE regional air transport time series database.• Population and urban centres/localities (UC/L) data was drawn from the 2001Census of Population and Housing data. UC/Ls are census districts (CDs) groupedtogether to approximate the extent and boundaries of all towns with an enumeratedpopulation of 200 people or more. The ABS defines towns with populationsabove 1000 people as ‘urban centres’ and towns with populations between 200and 999 people as ‘localities’. An extensive set of criteria is used to define theboundaries of a UC/L. These criteria include population size, population density,number of dwellings and so forth. The UC/L structure does not cover the entireAustralian population (ABS 2001c). In 2001, the defined UC/Ls covered 17 millionpeople. There were 2.6 million people or 13.3 per cent of the population wholived in communities of less than 200 people. They were classified under ruraland migratory areas and were outside the UC/L classification. These people wereexcluded from the analysis. There were 1709 UC/Ls in 2001. Of which, 715 wereurban centres and 994 were localities.AssumptionsTwo set of analyses were undertaken in this section based on different assumptions.The first analysis assumed that the reasonable access distances to regular scheduledair services within Australia were (Figure 4.20):• 120 km to large or medium airport• 40 km to small or rural airport.128