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BITRE | Report 115Table 6.16 Distribution of regional airports: airport size by number of servingairlines, 2005No. of airportsNo. of operators Large airports Medium airports Small airports Rural airportsSingle operator 1 12 30 74Two operators 3 8 6 5Three operators 3 8 2 2Four operators 6 3 0 0Five operators 3 0 0 0Six operators or more 4 0 0 0Total 20 31 38 81Source: BITRE time series estimates.Use of the appropriate aircraft size plays an important role in the economics ofairlines. As discussed in Chapter 3, matching the right aircraft to the markets is acritical aspect of the overall operating cost. Table 6.17 shows the distribution of flightsby aircraft payload for each airport size. Generally, below certain payloads or stagelengths, no aircraft can operate profitably. The use of low capacity aircraft increasesas the airport size decreases (Table 6.17a).In terms of aircraft seats, the flight frequency of aircraft with 100 seats or more is thehighest at large airports (Table 6.17b). Both large and medium airports had a highpercentage of flights using aircraft with 30 to 100 seats. Small airports appear to havea fairly even mixture of flights using aircraft with less than 18 seats, 18 to 29 seats and30 to 100 seats. More than half of the flights at rural airports used aircraft with lessthan 18 seats; and a third of the flights used aircraft with an 18 to 29 seat capacity.Two groups of aircraft take-off weight dominated the regional market. That is aircraftwith a take-off weight of 15 tonnes or less and aircraft with a take-off weight of morethan 21 tonnes (Table 6.17c). As expected, approximately 72 per cent of flights at largeairports used aircraft with a take-off weight of more than 21 tonnes. On the other hand,more than 60 per cent of the flights at medium, small and rural airports used aircraft witha take-off weight of 15 tonnes or less.Table 6.17d shows that close to 60 per cent of the all flights at large airports used jetaircraft. Most of the flights at medium, small and rural airports used turboprop aircrafts.Approximately 40 per cent of flights at rural airports used piston-driven aircrafts andanother 40 per cent of flights used turboprop aircraft. Close to 20 per cent of flights atrural airports used jet aircraft.Overall, the airline industry shows a general pattern of a good match between aircraftsize and targeted market size. On a nationwide scale, the rationalisation of aircraft sizeand market size, to an extent, represents system efficiency in terms of the reallocationof resources.176