ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to familiarise the reader with those performances of the air transport system components − airlines, airports, and ATC/ATM – which are relevant for the analysis and assessment of sustainability. The performances of each component are grouped into six categories as such i) Technical/technological; ii) Operational; iii) Economic; iv) Social; v) Environmental; and vi) Institutional. Unlike in other relevant books and studies dealing with transport sustainability, which focus exclusively on the economic, social, and environmental performances, this approach explicitly embraces the technical/technological and operational performances as the main driving forces of other performances. This makes it easier to understand the relationships between the ultimate causes and consequences because each category of performances can be at the same time a cause and a consequence (INFRAS, 2000; Spangenberg, 2002; Janić, 2003). Such extension of the scope of approach primarily aims to address the inherent complexity and hierarchy of the interrelations between the performances of the air transport system components − from the technical/ technological to the institutional performances, and vice versa. Figure 2.1 shows a generic scheme of such interrelationships.
