THE AIR TRANSPORTATION SECTOR AND THE INTEREST IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

The air transportation industry has gradually increased its share quota of overall passenger transport and cargo traffic on a global basis, which represents a significant contribution to economic and social development. The purpose of this work is to review the theoretical and empirical literature on air transportation and, more specifically, the costs of this sector. The systematic literature review method (SLR) has been used to identify and summarise the literature in this field and to determine its chronological evolution and hence corroborate whether there is a growing interest in the academic literature on the management and costs of air transportation. In the course of this work, some 1,007 scientific papers published between 1997 and 2009 were identified as dealing with the topic of air transportation in general, of which 63 articles researching the costs of air transportation were analysed in-depth. This research provides a new and systemised summary of the current status of the literature on the air transportation sector. The findings obtained reveal that academics have shown a growing interest in recent years in researching and publishing greater information on this subject. The use of SLR represented an important contribution to this work with a view to possible replications in future studies. In this context, the document aims to make a contribution to academic theory based on scientific evidence.