Comparing proximity for couples of close airports. Case studies on city-airports in the pre COVID-19

Following the existing relationships between cities and airports, well depicted in the sectorial literature ((Thierstein and Conventz, 2018), (Tira et al., 2006), (Freestone, 2009), (Percoco, 2010), (Ventura et al., 2020), this paper aims to investigate the linkages between the touristic traffic of some airports and the related development of the cities in which they are placed. The chosen case studies regard different remote regions (ONU, 2018) of three different countries (Italy, Norway, Cyprus), considering couples of near airports (Dziedzic and Warnock-Smith, 2015). The paper focuses the analysis on four couples of near airports, two from the South of Italy (Bari and Brindisi in the Apulia Region; Palermo and Trapani in Sicily), one in the North of Norway (Bødo and Narvik in Hålogaland) and the last one in the Republic of Cyprus (Larnaca and Paphos). A GIS analytic methodology has been used to describe the differences between the different couples of airports. Managed by the GIS analytical evaluation, the purpose of this paper is to give support to the different theories about the development of couples of close airports, using geographic tools to support economic and financial planning ((Cook and Billig, 2017) (Graham, 2014), (AntonínKazdaa et al., 2017) (Young and Wells, 2011))]. There has been pointed out the results of the adopted methodology on the working Norwegian network system analysis.