Case Studies on Transport Policy 9 (2021) 1912–1921

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Case Studies on Transport Policy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cstp

Scientific investigations in air transport about Brazil: A bibliometric review

Viviane Adriano Falcão a, *, Francisco Gildemir Ferreira da Silva b,
Francisco Heber Lacerda de Oliveira c, Nathane Ana Rosa Negri a,
Maurício Oliveira de Andrade a, Anísio Brasileiro a, Rogéria de Arantes Gomes Eller d,
Rosário Macário e
a
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Center of Technologies and Geosciences, Federal University of Pernambuco, UFPE, Brazil
b
Graduate Program in Economics, Federal University of Ceará, UFC, Brazil
c
Department of Transportation Engineering, Center of Technologies, Federal University of Ceará, UFC, Brazil
d
Department of Air Transport, Division of Civil Engineering, Technological Institute of Aeronautics, ITA, Brazil
e
CERIS/CESUR – DECivil, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Brazil has a significant contribution in air transport worldwide, both for the importance of this mode for people
Airport to move and for the size of its airport infrastructure. Many studies have been carried out in Brazil on different
Airline areas of research in air transport, but none of them focus on identifying main areas of research and their gaps.
Aircraft
This article aims to survey the areas of research in which there is the greatest amount of knowledge and those
Air transport
Review
lines where there are gaps to fill. For this purpose, an analysis of the articles in both national and international
Bibliometric journals were performed, besides proceedings of conferences on related topics. In the first case, national journals
has been carried out for the last twelve years, using the Sucupira Platform of the National Council for Scientific
and Technological Development – CNPq as a reference, identifying the Journal of Transport Literature and
Transportes. For the international references, five international journals of high impact were verified. Papers
were also raised in the proceedings of the last three years in the Conference of Research and Education in
Transportation (ANPET) and in the Symposium in Air Transport (SITRAER) for 2019. The search filters were
delimited by keywords in common use in journals. The classification of areas of knowledge was defined based on
international literature, with four areas defined: Airline, Airports, Aircraft and Air Navigation. The following
lines of research were also defined: Mobility, Safety, Sustainability, Industry/services, Economy, Policies,
Environment and Social Development. The results show that 86% of the studies focused on research in the areas
of Airlines and Airports, of which, of this total, more than 47% have Economics as their research line; the
remaining 14% dealt with Aircraft and Air Navigation. Cargo transportation corresponds to only 3% of publi­
cations. The results showed gaps in the lines of research in Mobility, Social Development, Environment and
Sustainability; in addition, security research focuses on the airport environment, with no publication in airlines.
Cargo transportation needs to be further studied, especially when modal integration logistics is a necessity in a
globalized world.

1. Introduction multidimensional nature having interfaces with different entities

(Kalakou and Macário, 2013). Therefore, there is an interaction among
Air transport is a complex and continuously changing activity the actions of a series of actors from different disciplines that, together,
(Raynes and Tsui, 2019). This system consists of four main elements: promote conditions for the proper and safe functioning of air transport.
aircraft, airports, airlines, and airspace (Hirst, 2008). Cargo and pas­ Air transport operations are influenced by society’s demands and are
sengers are transported by aircraft, built by the aviation industry, that the object of the actions of various social actors. Thus, policies are
are operated by airlines and use airspace and airports. Airports develop a implemented by public authorities that institute the legal and regulatory

* Corresponding author at: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Center of Technologies and Geosciences, Federal University of Pernambuco, UFPE,
Avenida da Engenharia, s/n – Cidade Universitária, 50670-420 Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.
E-mail address: viviane.afalcao@ufpe.br (V.A. Falcão).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2021.10.012
Received 7 May 2020; Received in revised form 28 September 2021; Accepted 5 October 2021
Available online 26 October 2021
2213-624X/© 2021 World Conference on Transport Research Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
V.A. Falcão et al. Case Studies on Transport Policy 9 (2021) 1912–1921

framework for air transport (Schmitt and Gollnick, 2016). Economic in airport management since 2013 (Silva et al., 2019). In the last seven
activities are essential to people’s well-being and they strongly influence years, there have been five rounds of airport concessions to the private
the airline industry. Transport systems – air, rail, sea, and road – need to sector. Currently, 22 airports are under private management (ANAC,
act in a complementary way, through multimodal operations. However, 2020), including those with the greatest demands. This set of airports
they almost always act in a competitive way (Schmitt and Gollnick, granted to different national and international business groups handles
2016). Furthermore, the environmental issue is of great relevance today, about two thirds of passengers embarked and disembarked in the
in terms of emissions and noise that impact climate change and quality country (SAC, 2020).
of life with effects over the regulation and modal competition. According to Fernandes and Pacheco (2018) when government de­
What can be observed is that Sustainability is more related to aspects cides to implement concessions, their claims and purpose are to improve
of efficient use and recycling, while Environment is related to the productivity, service, and provision. However, the results showed by the
Environment in which it is inserted, considering the climate, meteo­ literature are controversial; showing cases where it indeed occurs and
rology, emissions and noise, as established by Schmitt and Gollnick others where it does not. In the case of Brazilian airports, concession
(2016). Fig. 1 shows how air transport and its institutional context are policies show that they are leading to degradation in Infraero’s perfor­
related, forming a structure with interfaces that prove its multidisci­ mance indicators, and that there is no sign of this situation being
plinary and multisectoral character. reverted. Furthermore, regional Brazilian airports are far behind the
Air transport in Brazil dates to the first decades of the 20th century. efficiency levels of the airports in the capital of states.
Airport infrastructure and aeronautical technology were developed in Since the end of the 1990s, Brazilian air transport has been impacted
Brazil through the consolidation of centres of excellence at national and by intense changes, such as the deregulation of fares, the insertion of
international levels in research and innovation, such as the Technolog­ low-cost companies, merger of airlines, the intensification of the
ical Institute of Aeronautics (ITA), EMBRAER and the Military Institute manufacture of commercial and military aircraft, the application of new
of Engineering (IME). Important governmental bodies were also created, pavement and design technologies for runways and takeoffs, in addition
such as the Civil Aviation Department (DAC), replaced by the National to airport concessions to the private sector. These significant changes
Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC), the Civil Aviation Secretariat (SAC), the have been the subject of research at the leading Brazilian research and
Brazilian Airport Infrastructure Company (INFRAERO) and the Depart­ graduate institutions with a focus on transport engineering.
ment of Airspace Control (DECEA), to formulate public policies, carry This research aims at the formation of high-quality human resources,
out airport management, flight safety and sector regulation. keeping Brazil in a prominent position in the world in scientific and
In a globalized world, air transport is strategic for the movement of technological knowledge. In this way, they strengthen the quality of
people and cargo. In Brazil, it becomes essential for the connectivity service planning and the management of companies that operate in air
between cities and regions, from the coast to the interior, from the most transport. In this context, relevant themes emerge and force the
dynamic regions to the new areas of agricultural frontiers in intense expansion of the frontiers of scientific and technological knowledge.
development. This need for air connectivity is explained by the fact that New questions are being asked by the institutions involved with the
Brazil is the second country in the world in number of aerodromes, being sector and, mainly, by universities, aiming to answer the challenges
surpassed only by the USA (World Bank, 2018). In 2018, the air trans­ posed by the globalization of the economy, by the increasingly complex
port market in Brazil had an annual movement of around 94 million management and regulation of public and private infrastructures, in
passengers, even after more than three years of recession. In terms of addition to the need to meet the principles of environmental
market size, Brazil is the largest country in Latin America, ranking sustainability.
among the 15 largest ones in the world (ICAO, 2018). In this context, in order to understand the dynamics of research
Regarding modernization and expansion of some of its main airports, development worldwide and in Brazil, it is of great importance to carry
Brazil has experienced some regulatory models for private participation out bibliometric studies because they play an essential role in the
analysis of a country’s scientific production, as its indicators reveal the
degree of development of an area of scientific knowledge (Araújo and
Alvarenga, 2011). According to these authors, between 1987 and 2007,
of the total of theses and dissertations developed in Brazil, only 6%
referred to bibliometric studies in Engineering, which demonstrate the
need for studies with this objective, in order to better understand the
path taken by Brazilian scientific research and what the needs for future
guidance are.
Tanrıverdi et al. (2020) performed a bibliometric review on air
transport published by the Journal of Air Transport Management
(JATM). They surveyed 1483 JATM papers from 2001 to 2019 to extract
the themes that expressed the main research fields in the context of
world air transport. As a result, the top 21 keywords with the strongest
citation were identified as: airport, privatization, airline alliance, entry,
strategic alliance, aircraft noise, industry, low-cost carrier, alliance, low-
cost airline, airline competition, airline service quality, data envelop­
ment analysis, efficiency, airport efficiency, airport economics, owner­
ship form, level, behavioral intention, passenger, and economic
development. Before the study of Tanrıverdi et al. (2020), only Ginieis
et al. (2012) performed a literature review covering the period between
1997 and 2009 on the topics of Air Transport at international level, but
with no focus on Brazil.
In addition, in the Air Transport area of the literature review studies
are on specific and several topics, since performance measurement,
tourism, business performance to Air Transport Service Quality Factors
Fig. 1. Air Transport System and its interfaces. Source: Schmitt and Goll­ (Iyer et al., 2019; Spasojevic et al., 2016; Fasone and Aguirre, 2016 and
nick (2016). Bellizzi et al., 2020). As an example, Yao et al. (2019) sought after a

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narrative review to assess experiences regarding mechanical circulatory main themes, or the most studied by the researchers, were divided into
support devices in air medical transport and identify important factors 11 assignments, with the management theme accounting for 29.7% of
to ensure safety in air transport. the total. Moreover, the Journal of Air Transport Management (JATM)
In the case of Brazil, the main approached topics in Air Transport represented 521 articles published out of the 1059. However, studies
area are economical and environmental ones, such as pollution, noise, such as that of Ginieis et al. (2012) were not found in the literature,
and emissions. Marazzo et al. (2010) investigated the relationship be­ neither for the Brazilian context or else.
tween air transport demand and economic growth between 1966 and In bibliometric analysis it is necessary to collect relevant biblio­
2006 in Brazil. The results suggested that demand and economic growth graphic elements from the articles, that is, year, name of the collabo­
were co-integrated. rator, affiliations, keywords to be analyzed to obtain information and
Fajersztajn et al. (2019) performed a review on the effects of pollu­ interpretation (Das, 2013). Saracevic and Garfieldd (2010) define
tion from airport activity on the health of the population located near important indicators for bibliometric analysis, namely: number of pub­
Sao Paulo International Airport in the city of Guarulhos. Besides, they lications, number of citations, H-index, articles with the highest number
concluded that residing near airports increases the likelihood of devel­ of citations and the number of collaborators. In this article, it was
oping health problems or exacerbating pre-existing conditions, and that considered the number of publications, year of publication, Qualis of the
there is a gap on the international scientific literature relating to health journal, authors and their area of expertise, title and institution of local
effects of air and noise pollution on residents living near airports. link of origin of the study, language and keywords.
Therefore, this article summarizes the research effort developed in The article search, using the descriptors: Air Transport, Airports and
the last twelve years (2009–2020) in Brazil, in the field of air transport, Air Navigation, has been made separately in each database of the
highlighting the most discussed themes, the most productive in­ Journal of Transport Literature and Transportes Journal in the last
stitutions, the main scientific contributions of researchers and the twelve years. The same search was made on the Proceedings of the main
existing gaps. These may represent lines of research of relevant interest Conference of Research and Education in Transport – ANPET, in 2017,
for the development of the sector at the national level. 2018 and 2019 since it is only in these years that the studies were made
The articles collected come from national and international publi­ available on the platform. Besides that, we considered the proceedings
cations by Brazilian researchers or researchers from Brazilian in­ of 2019 SITRAER.
stitutions or associated with them. In air transport, the Journal of Searches also reached the Journal of Air Transport Management,
Transport Literature/RELIT stands out, discontinued in 2016, under the which according to Ginieis et al. (2012) is the journal that most pub­
coordination of researchers from ITA, and the National Association for lishes articles in the Air Transport area, in that case we considered the
Research and Education in Transportation - ANPET, which edits the papers of the last twelve years. In addition, a search was made in the
journal Transportes and organizes annual conferences, with technical basis of Science Direct, using the same descriptors. As Aircraft is not the
sessions on the topic. Besides, the Symposium in Air Transportation focus of the Transport Engineering area, the research did not use this
(SITRAER) organized by Brazilian Air Transportation Research Society keyword. In this search, in Science Direct, it was added four more in­
(SBTA) is also an important source. It is also worth mentioning the in­ ternational journals of great impact that published articles from Bra­
clusion of articles by Brazilian researchers in various issues in the in­ zilian institutions or about Brazil, which are: Transportation Research
ternational publication, such as the Journal of Air Transport Part A: Policy and Practice; Transportation Research Part E: Logistics
Management (JATM) and in journals based on Science Direct. The next and Transportation Review; Journal of Transport Geography and
stage of this study describes the methodology that defines the research Transport Policy, which corroborates with Ginieis et al. (2012) as being
sample base, the filter criteria and the choice of articles to compose the journals with a high degree of publication of works in the area of air
analysis. Then, a brief characterization of the research areas is presented transport.
through a general classification of national research. We classified each paper, considering their title, keywords and ab­
stract, first in passenger or cargo, then in areas as airline, airport, air
2. Survey methodology navigation and aircraft, eventually in fields of research (Mobility, Safety
and Security, Sustainability, Industry/Services, Economy, Politics,
This article is based on a bibliometric and meta-analysis method, Environment and Societal Development) as proposed by Schmitt and
which uses statistical analysis (Cordeiro et al. 2007). Systematic litera­ Gollnick (2016).
ture review with a bibliometric approach is a research method devel­ It is important to point out that a limitation of the research would be
oped from surveys in databases made up of published scientific articles. the fact that it did not open the search process in other international
However, it is important to note that according to Momesso and Noro­ journals for specific areas, and also, for having disregarded some others
nha (2017), bibliometrics is not an equivalent to Statistical Bibliog­ such as Transportation Science, and others from the Science Direct base,
raphy, but rather a structured part of documentation as a science. Yang considered very specific or with a low impact factor. For this study, it
et al. (2013) applied bibliometrics to determine trends and research was chosen high impact international magazines, covering the transport
performance in each area of knowledge and used the frequency of area, and is Qualis A1, except for JATM, which currently is Qualis A2.
keywords in the analysis. Qualis indicator is further explained in item 3.1.
In the field of air transport, Merkert and Bushell (2020) performed a The Proknow-C (Knowledge Development Process-Constructivist)
systematic literature review on drone regularization. The result shows method, developed, and patented at the Federal University of Santa
the need for further policy and management response to manage both a Catarina (UFSC), by Ensslin et al. (2010) was adapted. The objective of
rapid and efficient drone usage growth. the method is to develop the selection of the most relevant articles on the
Some studies use the bibliometric method in order to address the topic of interest to the researcher and to ascertain the main works, au­
most used tool to measure airport efficiency (Iyer et al., 2019). The thors and journals that have published on the topic of interest.
authors analyzed 61 articles, published between the years 2009–2017.
As a result, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) tool was the most used 3. National air transport research
among the surveyed papers.
Other studies use the bibliometric method on several topics, such as 3.1. Obtaining the basis for research and the keywords
business performance, tourism, and service quality factors (Spasojevic
et al., 2016; Fasone and Zapata-Aguirre, 2016; Bellizzi et al, 2020). This section indicates the journals chosen for the research due to
Ginieis et al. (2012) evaluated 1059 articles focused on the interests their relevance, according to criteria of the federal research support
of air transport studies, between the years 1997–2009. In addition, the agencies, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education

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Personnel (CAPES) and the National Council for Scientific and Tech­ Table 1
nological Development (CNPq). First, the main national and interna­ Journal/proceedings analyzed.
tional journals in the area of Air Transport were surveyed. Based on Journal Impact
CAPES ’Sucupira platform, the journals with the greatest national Factor
impact were considered considering the QUALIS indicator, and which Transportes na
focused on Transport, so that they could contain relevant articles for the Journal of Transport Literature – JTL/RELIT na
survey. Journal of Air Transport Management – JATM 2.412
In the case of CAPES, it was decided to investigate the figures of Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice-TR_A 3.693
Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation 4.253
ranked journals of Qualis-Sucupira. The classification in large areas of Review-TR_E
knowledge of engineering by CAPES, focus of the research are: Engi­ Journal of Transport Geography – JTG 3.56
neering I: Civil Engineering of Structures, Civil Construction, Hydraulics Transport Policy – TP 3.19
(Water Resources), Geotechnics, Sanitation and Transport; Engineering ANPET na
SITRAER na
II: Chemical, Metallurgical and Materials, Mining and Nuclear Engi­
neering; Engineering III: Mechanical, Naval, Aerospace and Production
Engineering; Engineering IV: Electrical, Electronic and Biomedical En­ proceedings were in second place, with 52 articles published only from
gineering. These areas are used to qualify the impact of scientific jour­ the 2019s. ANPET’s proceedings were in third place, with 42 articles
nals in Brazil in the Ranking: A1, A2, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5 and C. CAPES published, even with the inclusion of articles only from the last three
has been working to consider only one Ranking of Qualis Indicators to years. Transportes and JATM remain equal, with 33 articles each, the
all large areas of knowledge, and now we consider the new classification other international journals totalize 13 articles, with an average of 3
A1, A2, A3, A4, B1, B2, B3 and B4. articles per magazine over these 12 years. In order to balance the content
In this analysis, none of national journals rated A1 and A2 were of the sample, the period of the collected data was distributed in 12 years
identified in the study area, according to the CAPES criterion for the for journals (except RELIT, which was discontinued in 2016), 3 years for
2013–2016 quadrennium. Then, Brazilian journals rated B1 to B3 were ANPET and one year for SITRAER. The decision of not including other
checked for quick search of publications. This analysis identified eight years in the conference samples is justified by the number of articles
journals in Engineering I, III and IV, in the following list: Journal of from each source. In events like conferences, it is expected that there are
Transport Literature; Transportes; Applied Economics (Print); New more articles per event rather than in a journal issue. For instance,
Economy (UFMG); and Contemporary Economy Journal (Print). SITRAER the conference with the shortest period of register, provided 52
Filtering in the area of interest indicated two of the eight journals as the articles that represent almost 20% in the total of samples.
focus of the present research: Journal of Transport Literature and From the analyzed publications, when a hierarchical clustering al­
Transportes. Due to the small number of national journals in the area, it gorithm was applied, a set of keywords was obtained to express the main
was decided to include the articles published in the proceedings of the themes and approaches that represent the recent national research on
Conference of Research and Education in Transportation, in the years the Air Transport theme. Fig. 2 presents, in a cloud, the words extracted
2017, 2018 and 2019. In addition, some international journals in the from the set represented by the 276 articles. The most frequent words
area of transport and Qualis A1 were considered. Still, according to are demand, air transport, airports, fares, regulation, and econometrics,
Gineis et al. (2012) such journals denote a large number of publications followed by regional, costs, airlines and noise. It is important to note
on the topic Air Transport, being: Journal of Air Transport Management, that the great evidence of these words points to the main areas and lines
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice; Transportation of research from the analyzed articles. The words, demand, fares,
Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review; Journal of econometrics, and costs point to economic analyzes, which effectively
Transport Geography and Transport Policy. represent the main line of Brazilian research, as will be seen in the an­
alyzes that follow. Furthermore, in the set of words, terms such as
3.2. Research protocol for articles by different examiners regulation, competition and concessions demonstrate a research concern
with the regulatory aspects of air transport services and infrastructures,
The analyzed articles were classified in works focused on cargo, evidenced by the recent airport concessions to the private initiative. The
passenger or both transport and in the four major areas of research in Air following are the publications classified in areas and lines of research, as
Transport: Airlines, Airports, Aircraft and Air Navigation, and in the proposed by Schmitt and Gollnick (2016).
subclassifications in Mobility, Safety, Sustainability, Industry / Services, Considering the 276 articles analyzed, 8 focused on the cargo sector,
Economics, Policies, Environment and Social Development. The search 145 on passenger transport and the remainder on both sectors, as they
selected articles published in the last 12 years, that is, starting in 2009. focus on aircraft operation. The data show a strong trend for research
In addition to the two main national transport journals, Journal of with passengers in Brazil. Regarding the four areas, 20 papers highlight
Transport Literature – RELIT/JTL and Transportes, the proceedings of the Aircraft area, 134 papers in the Airports area, 102 papers address
2017, 2018 and 2019 of the Transportation Research and Education issues related to Airlines and 20 focus on issues related to Air Naviga­
Conference – ANPET, the proceedings of 2019 of the Symposium in Air tion. Therefore, there is a high incidence of work in the scope of studies
Transportation – SITRAER as well as the Journal of Air Transport in Airports and Airlines (86% of the papers) as shown in Table 2.
Management – JATM, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Fig. 3 shows the amount of publications by large areas. There was a
Practice – TR_A; Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Trans­ peak in publications on Airlines in 2011, which may be related to the
portation Review – TR_E; Journal of Transport Geography – JTG and consolidation of Azul’s performance in the Brazilian market. From 2012,
Transport Policy – TP for being relevant international journals in the the work covering Airports became more numerous, probably due to
area of Transport and for having a good incidence of studies in Air airport concessions. In addition, there is a small number of publications
Transport according to Gineis et al (2012). Table 1 shows the Editors, in the areas of Navigation, due to their nature of military domain and
impact factor and name of the journals. Aircraft, with a profile more focused on Aeronautical Engineering, Me­
A significant number of articles (276) were analyzed, distributed in chanics and Materials, not analyzed in the research.
the seven selected journals and proceedings. It is observed that the In relation to the number of articles by journals/proceedings, it can
largest publisher of works in the study area is RELIT/JTL, totaling 103 be seen, from Fig. 4, that the Journal of Transport Literature – RELIT /
articles, almost half of the publications, despite having been dis­ JTL was one of the major publishers of air transportation papers, how­
continued in 2016. From these figures, its great importance for the ever with its discontinuation from 2016, it had for consequence an
consolidation of the research area in Brazil can be seen. SITRAER’s

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Fig. 2. Cloud of keywords.

Table 2
Quantity of Articles × Classification.
Classification n◦ papers %

Passenger 145 53
Cargo 8 3
Both 123 45
TOTAL 276 100
Airport 134 49
Airline 102 37
Aircraft 20 7
Air Navigation 20 7
TOTAL 276 100

Fig. 4. Number of publications over the years considering the journal /

proceedings.

Fig. 3. Number of Papers per Large Research Area.

increase of publications in Transportes journal and international publi­

cations such as Journal of Air Transport Management – JATM, Trans­
portation Research Part A: Policy and Practice – TR_A; Transportation
Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review – TR_E; Journal of
Transport Geography – JTG and Transport Policy – TP, however the
latter with little incidence of work. Fig. 5. Research Institutions × Number of Published Papers.
Fig. 5 shows the list of institutions that carry out scientific in­
vestigations in these areas. ITA is highlighted because the higher num­ University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and the University of Brasília (UNB).
ber of articles presented, as it is a teaching and research institution Next comes the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC), the Federal
specialized in the subject. Then, there are also important institutions in University of Ceará (UFC), and the Federal Fluminense University (UFF)
air transport, such as the University of São Paulo (USP), the Federal and INFRAERO. Among the seven most productive institutions in the

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scientific research on Air Transportation area, only the Federal Uni­

versity of Ceará is not located in the southeastern region of Brazil.
As for the main research areas, according to the classification of
Schmitt and Gollnick (2016), of the works evaluated by journals / pro­
ceedings, it is noticed that the proceedings of ANPET, SITRAER and the
JATM journal have a great focus on Airports and, secondly on Airlines.
At RELIT/JTL the emphasis is on Airlines and, second, on Airports.
Transportes journal, in turn, maintains the areas of Airports and Airlines
with the same number of publications, as shown in Fig. 6
When evaluating the lines of research contained in the four areas of
the Air Transport interface, it appears that in all journals/proceedings
the line of research in Economics is prioritized, followed by Industry /
Services. The exception is the ANPET conference, in which Policies is the
second largest line of research. According to Fig. 7, lines of research such
as Social Development, Mobility and Sustainability have few publica­
tions in the analyzed journals and proceedings. Most likely, research on
these topics may have been published in specific journals, which were
not analyzed in this article.
The following is a specific analysis of the major areas, knowing that
most of the works deal with research lines linked to the Airlines and

Fig. 7. Lines of researches of articles by journals. Made in Tableau 2019.4.

Airports.

3.3. Airline

In order to identify national research gaps, the works analyzed in the

large airline area total 102 articles, of which 72 are exclusive for pas­
sengers and 2 for cargo. The others were both cargo and passengers.
Among the lines of research considered, the Economy (Demand,
Market and Finance) is the one with the highest number of papers,
totaling 74, almost 73% of the total papers focused on the Airline. The
line that comes in second place is that of Politics, with 10 paper,
involving lines of Regulation and Legislation. With 10 paper also the
Industry / Services theme in which most of the study is in the context of
Service Level and Passenger Satisfaction. Environment brings together
four papers, Sustainability two papers, of which Mobility, Social
Development and Environment / Politics are represented by one paper
each. The topic of security was not addressed. Fig. 8 presents a graph
where the area of each circle represents the number of works published
in the Airline area.
Fig. 9 shows the evolution of work focused on Airlines, considering
the research lines previously mentioned. It is worth mentioning that
Economics has had a constant participation over the years, but Politics,
despite some changes proposed by ANAC in recent years, such as the
deregulation of luggage, have not been the subject of many studies in
Brazil since 2018. The Environment theme comprises only two articles
in 2011. In turn, the Sustainability theme presented only two papers in
2018.

Fig. 6. Areas of articles by journals. Made in Tableau 2019.4.

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3.5. Air Navigation and Aircraft

In the Air Navigation and Aircraft areas, 40 papers were identified in

the last 10 years, 20 in the Air Navigation area and 20 in the Aircraft
area. In Air Navigation, the published research lines focus on Safety
(60% of the total). It is assumed that the topics covered in it are less
investigated by the Academy because this area is of military re­
sponsibility. When evaluating the studies focused on Aircraft, a great
multidisciplinarity is observed, being composed by studies in the scope
of Mobility, Security, Economy, Politics, Environment and in Industry/
Services. Fig. 12 shows two graphs for the Aircraft and Air Navigation
areas.

4. Results

When analyzing the main national and international journals, in

addition to the proceedings of the largest national transport research
conference, it can be seen that ITA has been playing the role of Aero­
nautics School in Brazil, with just over 38% of the total number of ar­
ticles published. Its researchers have carried out studies in different
Fig. 8. Number of papers in the Airline. Made in Tableau 2019.4.

3.4. Airports

The articles analyzed in the large field of Airports represent 68

studies for passengers and 5 for cargo. Among the papers the lines of
research are multidisciplinary, despite having in the Economy (Demand,
Market and Finance) the largest number of articles with 38 publications.
However, the next line is the Industry/Services with 29, and then, Pol­
itics, Safety and Environment, with 19, 22 and 14 publications,
respectively. Surprisingly, there are no studies in the Sustainable Air­
ports line for the past twelve years. Fig. 10 presents a graph with the
quantities of works published in the field of Airports, which a predom­
inance of articles in Economics. However, other lines have some
representativeness, except for Sustainability.
Fig. 11 shows the evolution of the works in the main research lines of
Airports. Note that Economics, Safety and Security, Politics and In­
dustries/Services have remained relatively constant over the years.
Environment with a focus on Airport noise is also of reasonable
Fig. 10. Number of papers by theme: Airport. Made in Tableau 2019.4.
relevance.

Fig. 9. Annual evolution of the number of studies: Airline.

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Fig. 11. Annual evolution of the number of publications: Airports.

link between this journal and other important institutions in the area,
which can be considered a very eclectic journal. Over 10 years of exis­
tence, at least two articles from 23 different institutions have been
published. In Transportes journal the institutions that most published
were: ITA, USP and UNB. Regarding international journals, the in­
stitutions with the largest number of publications are ITA, UFRJ and
USP. This fact demonstrates that the themes related to air transport,
studied in these institutions, are of interest to the literature.
Fig. 14 shows the number of articles grouped by journals/pro­
ceedings, classified in the areas and lines of research. The strong asso­
ciation among the areas of knowledge and the lines of research stands
out. The line Economy in Airline and Economy in Airport are recurrent
subjects in publications in the eight journals/proceedings. The same
Fig. 12. Number of works Aircraft and Air Navigation. Made in Tab­
situation can be interpreted on the Policies line in both areas, despite a
leau 2019.4.
smaller number of publications, mainly related to Airlines. Furthermore,
the most leading Brazilian institutions in Air Transport (ITA, UFRJ and
areas, as well as publications in journals and at conference, especially
when it comes to subjects highlighted in Economics and Industry/Ser­
vices, important topics in Transport Engineering.
When assessing the link between journals and research institutions,
Fig. 13 shows a strong link between RELIT / JTL and ITA. There is also a

Fig. 14. Number of articles separated by journals/proceedings, classified in the

Fig. 13. Institutions × journals. Made in Gephi. areas and lines of research. Made in Tableau 2019.4.

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V.A. Falcão et al. Case Studies on Transport Policy 9 (2021) 1912–1921

USP) have been focusing on Airlines Economy, and that is why most of Some considerations can be observed when compared to the study by
the papers and studies are about it. Ginieis et al (2012), namely:
In relation to areas with fewer publications, namely Air Navigation
and Aircraft, the first can be justified by the fact that it is linked to na­ • In 2009, the total number of articles on the theme Air Transport by
tional defense, and the second by being part of other areas of knowledge Ginieis et al (2012) was 120, while in this study it was 11. Making a
of Engineering such as: Aeronautics, Mechanics and Materials. As for the purely numerical comparison, Brazil represented less than 10% of
Social Development research line, there is a gap in the research studied publications with the theme Air Transport.
in Brazilian institutions and researchers. • Airports are highlighted in the studies, with just over 49% of the
Regarding the Industry and Services research line, there are publi­ papers, followed by airlines with almost 37% and Air Navigation and
cations in the Airport field, however, regarding the Airline Company, Aircraft with not even 8% each, a similar percentage to this study.
this subject is less studied. Few studies are focused on the Environmental • The subject of regulation is made up of a considerable number of
Area, despite remain an essential line the studies focus mainly on the publications. It should be noted that there is a low number for both
problem of Aeronautical Noises. Mobility is also a poorly researched studies Environment and Safety, especially for the latter.
topic and has few publications over the years. In general, Mobility
performs a primary role in most of the Brazilian transportation in­ Furthermore, the results suggest that there is a great variation in the
stitutions, but not for Air Transport specialized researchers. The Security areas of study and multidisciplinary studies, with the classification of
theme mainly highlights the security aspect at the airport level, with no subareas becoming somewhat complex.
publication in Security aligned with the Airline. Finally, works focused
on Sustainability are completely absent, mainly in the area of Airports. 5. Final considerations
All research line related to Environmental Area and/or Sustainability in
Airport can be considered recent here in Brazil, due to the recent This article systematized state of the art on the topic of Air Transport,
changes in governance, with the Brazilian Agency of Civil Aviation with guidelines in publications made by Brazilian institutions, identi­
(ANAC) starting in 2005. It is meaningful to observe that the gaps fying the areas where there are major advances and the areas in which
revealed in this paper may be explained due to the lack of researchers in important gaps are observed. Thus, the classification of articles was used
some subjects. by means of the title, being identified from the international literature,
Fig. 15 proves that the largest number of articles are concentrated in four major areas of knowledge, being: Airports, Airlines, Aircraft and Air
the Economy line, being directed mainly to airline problems. Some lines Navigation. Then, lines of research were defined: Mobility, Security,
such as Sustainability have only one record related to the Airline. Sustainability, Industry / Services, Economy, Policies, Environment and
Regarding Airports, there is a certain multidisciplinarity. Social Development.
The results show that ITA is the Brazilian institution with the highest
production in research in the field of Air Transport, a fact expected to be
the only Brazilian higher education institution for teaching and
researching with this purpose. In addition, the Southeast region registers
the largest number of institutions with research in the area. There are
two institutions in the Northeast that appears in the top 10 is the UFC
and UFPE.
The results reveal that 86% of the works focused on research in the
areas of Airlines and Airports, and of this total, more than 47% have
Economics as their research line. The remaining 14% dealt with the
Aircraft and Air Navigation themes. Also, in Airlines, the lines with a
focus on Policies and Industry/Services have records below the Econ­
omy. In the area of Airports there is a certain equity in the lines of
research, except for Sustainability, with no publication in the last 10
years. Cargo transportation corresponds to only 3% of publications,
which constitutes a serious gap to be filled with specific research in this
important area. Gaps are also identified in the lines of research on Social
Development, Environment, Mobility and Sustainability, with few
publications over the years. The theme Security focus at the airport
level, with no security publication portraying the Airlines.
The main limitations of this article are the fact that only journals
focused on the area of Transport Engineering were searched, and this
may explain why areas such as Aircraft and Air Navigation had a low
number of publications. It is recommended for future research to
analyze new areas of a more technological nature, such as Mechanical
Engineering, Materials Engineering, Electronics and Automation. In
addition, it shall be included more international journals, besides Qualis
A1, and others focused on sustainability and safety, for example. It is
also recommended that new bibliometric studies be carried out in
relation to the research areas developed by ITA, the most important
center for teaching, researching and training of human resources in
Brazil.
It is necessary to encourage the formation of research networks be­
tween Brazilian institutions, universities, and research centers world­
wide, in strategic areas such as cybersecurity and air navigation.
Therefore, it is important to carry out new bibliometric studies on the
Fig. 15. Classification × Number of articles. Made in Tableau 2019.4. state of the art of air transport research at an international level, in order

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