Global sustainability challenges are transforming 21st century business. Economic, social, and environmental sustainability impacts regulatory agencies and enterprises, particularly in the air transport industry, which facilitates access to productive services and market linkage. Stakeholders, shareholders, consumers, employees, and society are increasingly pressuring businesses to examine their socioeconomic consequences and manage them sustainably and resiliently. In this competitive and economically sensitive climate, good management is a primary responsibility for airport operators and authorities, as well as national and local economies. An assessment tool for airport strategic plans is developed in this research. Corporate activities can encourage responsible infrastructure development and company sustainability. The assessment methodology is based on a comparative analysis between airports and regulatory authorities’ threshold. The role of sustainability in the air transport business ecosystem is depicted using a systemic approach, demonstrating that its relationship to business performance is a significant barrier to business resilience and competition for planners, managers, and decision makers. The numerical application considers a group of European, U.S, and Asian airports serving international flights. Conventional wisdom is to provide the evaluation analysis framework for planning and managing capital-intensive transport hubs such as airports.

Air transport infrastructure development is crucial for economic and social growth. Regional airports connecting remote, tourist destinations such as islands provide important services and boost global and local commerce networks. Airport authorities intend to maximize expansion while limiting environmental impacts. Regional airports may achieve efficient environmental management by applying sustainable practices and developing long-term strategies. The purpose of this paper is the development of an in-depth comparison and assessment of the environmental sustainability performance of a number of regional airports in terms of the environmental impacts that are caused by their operations and their demand patterns. The evaluation methodology is based on the identification of evidence about the incorporation of key environmental management performance aspects in the environmental reports of the top five regional tourist airports in the Mediterranean islands. The most important finding was that airports, despite requiring an efficient and forward-thinking environmental management plan in order to address the environmental impact that they have, do not prioritize their environmental performance management issues. The conventional wisdom is to provide a framework for evaluating tourist airports’ performance toward environmental mitigation efforts, promote best practices, and benchmark sustainability for regions heavily dependent on tourism.

In most cases, the decision to invest in a new airport is not simple, mainly because of the complications in the planning process, the amount of capital that needs to be invested before the establishment of the business, and the number of stakeholders involved in the decision. The decision process is more complicated in restricted economic and financing conditions, where the performance of the business plan is strongly related to regional development prospects and future airport business outputs in the medium and long term. This paper provides an evaluation methodology approach to support decisions on airport development projects. The proposed methodology provides an evaluation framework based on a combination of an ex ante assessment analysis, considering the airport’s economic impact and its contribution to a specific regional economy. The Input–Output (IO) analysis framework is used to determine the economic footprint of the airport development. A series of key performance indicators (KPIs) are introduced to review the project performance in a given economic system. The case study is examined, focussing on a new airport at Heraklion in Crete (in the Kasteli valley), one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the southeast Mediterranean. Conventional wisdom is to present a systematic approach appropriate to relevant projects, providing essential tools that support decisions at the level of strategic planning. The approach is essential to provide key messages to national governments, decision makers, and stakeholders on the contribution of an airport investment to regional economic development and its contribution to the business ecosystem in the post-COVID-19 era.

The link between tourism and aviation is at the top of the agenda of many academic institutes, professional associations and regulatory authorities, mainly, because of the both industries high competitive business environment resulting demand volatility and business unpredictability. Airports serving tourist destinations are essential counterpart of the tourist demand supply chain and their productivity impact essential the mobility cost, the connectivity and the region’s attractiveness. This paper deals with the airport productivity assessment towards regional development (RD) for regions heavily dependent on tourism. The methodological approach promotes two essential steps: (a) the introduction of a set of key performance indicators (KPI) providing essential messages towards airport’s contribution in tourist regions and (b) a performance benchmarking for a group of airports with similar characteristics serving high demanded tourist destinations. The assessment methodology is based on a multi-objective unweighted analysis, introducing six KPIs to provide messages towards airport productivity contribution in RD, in the scale of strategic planning. The assessment framework uses a sample of seven islands constitute very attractive European tourist destinations for summer holidays and the assessment outputs provide key messages to planners, managers and decision-makers towards aviation and tourism interaction.

The economic development features for the decades after the Second World War provide evidence that investments to new infrastructures are a key driver in strengthening the national economy and enhancing nation’s productivity, as it creates economic benefits and additional income. However, the decision for fund allocation and investments in mega infrastructure pipeline projects often must be made in conditions that are much more fraught with uncertainty. The key question in such decisions is if the economic impact caused by the new project could be able to essentially boost the economy by creating new jobs and generating new income on one hand; and which are the business sectors expected to archive the benefits of this investment. This article deals with the estimation of the mega infrastructure pipeline project economic effects in economy. The methodological framework is based on input–output approach providing quantitative estimations about the economic impact of the project in terms of new income and jobs. The numerical application deals with the assessment of a cross-border crude oil pipeline project, connecting the ports of Burgas (Bulgaria) and Alexandroupolis (Greece), establishing a new transportation corridor for the crude oil from Black Sea to Southeast Mediterranean.