ABSTRACT
Changing spatiality (the concentration or dispersion) of air transport reflects the evolution of aircraft technology, regulatory systems, production systems of firms, and the nature of air travel demand (e.g., Bowen 2010, O’Connor 2003). Knowledge about the changing spatiality of air transport is relevant for understanding airline behaviour and the geographic distribution of its externalities (Reynold-Feighan 1998, 2010), and aids the management of various impacts. The externalities (pecuniary and non-pecuniary) include the changes in the spatiality of tourism and tourist dispersal. A closer look into the link between aviation and the spatiality of tourist flows has merit in that the latter is an indicator of the quality of aviation impact. The rapidly increasing affordability of air services, coupled with a liberalising air transport environment, means that air transport in the Asia Pacific is expected to achieve rapid growth (Graham 2010). The quality of this aviation growth, however, at least in the domain of air transport research, is often overlooked. ‘Quality’ can have a number of dimensions and is often subjective in its interpretation. Our approach is to take a perspective whereby quality is defined by the impact of aviation on tourism, the sector with which it is closely linked. More specifically, we focus on the spatial distribution of aviation-related tourist flows as an important facet of the quality of aviation impact.
