Journal of Air Transport Management 89 (2020) 101889 Available online 24 August 2020 0969-6997/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Spanish airports performance and effciency benchmark. A PESA-AGB study Maria Emília Baltazar a, * , Jorge Silva a, b a CERIS, Instituto Superior T´ ecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal b Universidade da Beira Interior, Aerospace Science Department (DCA-UBI), Rua Marquˆ es D’ ´ Avila e Bolama, 6201- 001, Covilh˜ a, Portugal A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Spanish airports Airport performance MCDA MACBETH Benchmarking Airport effciency ABSTRACT This study uses a MCDA tool to analyse and improve Spanish airports performance and effciency. Thus, a holistic study using MACBETH (with PESA-AGB) is used. This study has never been applied before in Spanish airports. Firstly, a literature review related to this study keywords is conducted, as well as about benchmarking concept applied specifcally to airports. Secondly, several methodologies in used to benchmark airports are reviewed and compared. Thirdly, airport performance and effciency issues are addressed and described. Finally, the MCDA- MACBETH (with PESA-AGB) tool is applied to 4 Spanish airports. Spanish airports belonging to AENA transported 263, 753, 406 passengers in 2018 with an increase compared to 2017 of 5.8%. General data enables to conclude that. Spanish air transportation system is growing annually and hence there is the need to improve airports per- formance and effciency, also to maintain the high levels of quality to address the growing demand. Spanish air transportation system is growing annually and is it upmost important to maintain high levels of quality to address such demand. Through this study, performance and effciency improvements are seek within several airport key areas such as Safety and Security, Quality Service, Productivity and Effectiveness, Financial and Environment. 1. Introduction Worldwide, it is possible to observe a change from the decade of the nineties, where various processes were developed such as the liberali- sation of air transportation, globalisation, or the emergence of low-cost airlines, which changed several things in the Spanish airport system. Currently, Spanish airports belonging to AENA transported 263, 753, 406 passengers in 2018 ( ´ AR, 2018) with an increase compared to 2017 of 5.8%. In 2017, traffc was 249, 218, 316 people transported, and the increase related with 2016 was 8.2%, while 2016 pointed to 230, 231, 359 people and an increase of 11.0% over 2015 (AENA, 2019). This data enables to conclude that Spanish air transportation is growing annually and, therefore, the need to improve and assess airports’ effciency and performance is essential to maintain high levels of quality to address the demand. If we do not improve effciency and performance, there will be a point where airports will be congested, so two options can be per- formed: expand airport facilities or improve their effciency and per- formance. The last option is much more economical and maximises the airport infrastructure utilisation. Thus, this will increase stakeholders’ satisfaction and will reduce airport costs. In Spain, the management of airports is centralised; that is, they operate as independent proft centres but are under the control of a central authority, AENA. This study focusses on large airports leaving small (less than 1 million passengers per year) behind as they are not considered proftable. The motivation of this work is to use an MCDA tool that will suggest how to improve performance and effciency of Spanish airports, and thus a holistic study using a mathematical tool such as MACBETH (Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique) is used to do so. For this purpose, this was the Multi-Criteria Decision Analyses (MCDA) methodology chosen using the PESA–AGB (Performance Eff- ciency Support Analysis – Airport Global Benchmarking) model. Four airports were chosen: Adolfo Su´ arez Madrid-Barajas (MAD), Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat (BCN), Sevilla (SVQ) and Valencia (VLC). Through this study, we seek to achieve improvements in many key areas of the airport, such as core, safety and security, quality service, productivity and effectiveness, fnancial and environment, where spe- cifc measures can be taken to reduce costs and thus improving satis- faction. Moreover, therefore, to achieve a global evaluation of the infrastructure. The study will be performed throughout two bench- marking studies. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: mmila@ubi.pt (M.E. Baltazar). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Air Transport Management journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jairtraman https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jairtraman.2020.101889 Received 23 December 2019; Received in revised form 3 April 2020; Accepted 23 July 2020