In theory and practice an increasing competition is supposed to boost thenumber and significance of cooperation. There are various forms of cooperations between companies aiming to enhance their own competitive capacity.More frequently, airport operators too adopt this concept. This reveals the intensified interest of this branch in cooperation and the subsequentlygrowing number of cooperations between airport operators. To the public the airport operators mainly state reasons like cost reduction, enhancementof efficiency as well as upgrading of performance and competitive capacity of the partner airports by exchange of experience and know-how-transfer.The ranges of cooperation are purchasing, technology, data management, ground traffic services, personnel matters, safety and security. Some forms of airport cooperations are briefly described in this study. The present study is meant to define the significance of cooperations and to allow comparison between market and hierarchy processes by means of several criteria(mutual dependence (lordship-relation), volume of cooperation (like intensity of the partners' communication requirements), complexity (like numberand inter-dependence of operational functions to be assumed by cooperation partners), cooperation yield (individual or shared between the cooperation partners, thus to be pooled according to a real cooperation), value (e.g. contributions to achieve the business objectives), administering level (e.g. the extent of contractual matters' settlement), term (long-term cooperation normally comprises more cooperative elements) selected according to an interdependence profile by TRÖNDLE. The study elucidates the facets of German airport cooperation. The study demonstrates that it is common practice for airport operators to choose cooperation with other airports as abusiness- strategic tool, in order to be able to successfully meet the requirements of competition. Furthermore, it revealed that cooperation between airports without legally recognised corporation is still quite common and the collaboration is based on various cooperative initiatives, which are either politically or economically motivated. Furthermore, the differentforms of airport cooperation were subject to dimensioning and thus analysed in detail. Thereto, selected common airport co-operative formations were evaluated and compared by applying several cooperation criteria. It revealed a high cooperative solidarity at least for the cooperation within airport systems, in a Holding or in a Joint Venture. For neighbour airports in a megalopolis, e.g. traffic shifting of airport systems (due to Europeanlaw) can be the most advantageous of all cooperative formations. When cooperating within a Holding and a Joint Venture, examples proved that co-operative solidarity can be quite stable even without the legal support givenby traffic shifting of an Airport System. Whereas, in a Holding a legallyrecognised corporation is mandatory, the Joint Venture suits the need forclose cooperation between potential co-solicitors without shareholding. From practice it could be seen that co-operation between several airports, forming a network and managed by a moderate coordina-tor, can be advantageous and be preferred to an Airport Alliance or even an Airport Group. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135582.
Samenvatting