A Data Envelopment Analysis methodology for the efficiency’s evaluation of a group of transport heliports offering scheduled flights

Heliports are relatively small infrastructures able to serve medium volumes of regional traffic in poor accessible areas or in zones just located to the next proximity, or in some cases inside, urban areas. The spaces required for the movement of heli-copters on the airsides of these infrastructures are far smaller than those required for airplanes. This characteristics derives from the great flexibility of the VTOL in mov-ing in tight spaces. On the other hand, the need for land saving especially in those filled areas within the major cities requires infrastructures large no more than a block. The use of the helicopter as a mean of transport to serve the traffic between cities and airports is a way to improve the performances of the major hubs by the de-congestion of traffic affecting both the landside and the airside and to increase the at-tractiveness towards otherwise inaccessible zones. This paper seeks to evaluate the efficiency of some heliports by using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The DEA is a non-parametric method used in Opera-tions Research for measuring and evaluating the performance of a group of DMUs (Decision Making Units). There is a great variety of applications of DEA for use in evaluating the performances of many different kinds of entities (hospitals, universi-ties, enterprises, airports etc.) engaged in different activities in many different con-texts in many different countries. Here we intend to investigate the inefficiencies linked to the infrastructural and operational features of a group of transport heliports where scheduled flights are supplied. Both CCR and BCC models are implemented to evaluate the efficiency in the Constant Returns to Scale (CRS) and Variable Re-turns to Scale (VRS) cases. Inputs and outputs are selected in virtue of the aim that we want to pursue in each simulation, on the basis of the infrastructural and opera-tional requirements of the heliports. In order to highlight the ranking of the DMUs under evaluation, a super-efficiency model is applied to the same peer group of heliports. The super-efficiency score enables one to distinguish between the efficient observations. In particular, the super-efficiency measure examines the maximal radial change in inputs and/or out-puts for an observation to remain efficient. Finally, the inference on the results allows to draw conclusions on the im-portance of the heliports as infrastructures to serve passenger traffic.