The Boeing 737 MAX crisis and COVID-19 pandemic have seriously influenced the development of China’s aircraft leasing industry in the past two years. This paper applies system dynamics theory to explore the sustainable development of China’s aircraft leasing industry. It analyses the dynamic mechanism and constructs a system dynamics model. Based on China’s macroeconomic data and historical data from the financial, aviation, and leasing industries, it aims to stimulate the development of China’s aircraft leasing industry in the next five years. Through sensitivity analysis, this research finds that changes in GDP growth have the most obvious impact on the sustainable development of China’s aircraft leasing industry. Reducing the average financing cost and the income tax rate of aircraft leasing companies, increasing their investment in talent, and controlling risk will increase the market share of China’s aircraft leasing companies and promote the development of the industry. However, increasing the number of aircraft leasing companies has little effect on market share. On this basis, this paper proposes policy recommendations to promote the sustainable development of China’s aircraft leasing industry.

The paper attempts to propose an optimal air ticket pricing model during the booking horizon by taking into account passengers’ purchasing behavior of air tickets. A Markov decision process incorporating a nested logit consumer response model is established to modeling the dynamic pricing process. The proposed model is estimated and applied using the data collected in a multi-airport region with competition in China. Results indicate that, by considering air ticket purchasing behavior, air ticket price can be set dynamically and optically in response to the changes in exogenous factors which are not controlled by airlines.

For the reason that passengers commonly need some time to change their habitual airport choice, the demand attracted by a newly conducted service of an airport may gradually increase at the start-up time. We refer to this duration as the cultivation period and analyze the variation in the market share within the period by simulating the switch of habitual airport choice. Considering the effects of habit on passengers’ cognitive risks, the cumulative prospect theory is applied to model the habitual airport choices, and the habit decay pattern is determined to construct the mechanism that links the sequential choices. The case of Lukou Airport in the Yangtze Delta Region is considered as an example to validate the simulation approach. The results show that the simulated market share fits the real data well, and the coach frequency and the on-time performance are two key factors that determine the efficiency of the coach service in the cultivation period. Meanwhile, setting dynamic coach frequencies is an effective strategy to guide passengers in quickly switching their habitual airport choice, which reduces the cultivation period.

To serve more markets for supporting its sustainable development, Zhuhai airport tends to act as a new gateway by providing an air–bridge–air path that links its domestic network to the international air routes of Hong Kong Airport, through surface transportation via the Hongkong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge. In order to identify the target passengers using the new gateway service, this paper proposes a market segmentation approach which incorporates the heterogeneity among passengers in the choice of the air–bridge–air route and explicitly incorporates people’s curiosity about the new service. A latent class choice model incorporating passengers’ curiosity is developed to identify the market segments of the new gateway service offered by Zhuhai Airport. The model is estimated using the stated preference data collected in 12 Chinese cities. The results indicate that people who have a high level of curiosity and/or are price sensitive prefer to use the new gateway service. Meanwhile, some segment-specific strategies of improving the new gateway service are proposed for the sustainable development of domestic airports which have the desire to cooperate with nearby hubs.