Airports are critical infrastructures that are believed to be essential for economic development
because they substantially increase the accessibility of the regions they serve. However, except for
several hub airports (e.g., Istanbul Atatürk International Airport and Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen
International Airport) and those serving tourist destinations (e.g., Antalya International Airport,
Mugla Bodrum-Milas International Airport, and Mugla Dalaman International Airport), airport
business is mostly financially unviable in Turkey like the rest of the world. While large airports tend
to make profits, smaller and regional airports hardly recover their costs (Doganis, 1992: p.5). The
airport industry is characterized by substantial initial infrastructure investment and the operating
revenues generally fail to recover annual operating expenses. Therefore, most of the regional and
small airports need financial contributions mostly in the form of cross-subsidization from larger
profitable airports (Ohta, 1999; Hooper, 2002; Lipovich, 2008; Reinhold et al, 2010).