Airports, as terminals for air transportation, are places for both the movement of passengers and freight. They have a major influence on urban development. The significance of air transportation is often underestimated by civic officials and transportation planners. Functionally, airports are no different from the older and well established rail or port terminals around which most of our contemporary metropolises have developed. An understanding of the nature of present and future air traffic

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... nables the transportation planner to foresee the urban spatial structure and its general relationship to the intercity transportation network. Before the impact of the airport upon the regional urban structure can be ascertained, it is necessary to establish the position and function of the airport within the regional transportation infrastructure. In order to determine this, it is necessary to know the present and future travel movements emanating from it and terminating there. Herein an hypothesis is postulated to determine the relative significance of a set of selected factors upon Vancouver's intercity air travel and ultimately their influence upon its spatial structure. INTERCITY AIR PASSENGER TRAFFIC IS INFLUENCED BY FOUR MAJOR FACTORS: POPULATION, INTERCITY AIR DISTANCE, INTERCITY LINE TIME, AND INTERCITY LINE PRICE. THIS SET OF INDEPENDENT VARIABLES CAN BE POSTULATED IN A MATHIMATICAL MODEL TO ADEQUATELY DESCRIBE AND FORECAST LEVELS OF INTERCITY AIR PASSENGER TRAFFIC. A description and review of current air traffic forecasting methods is continued out in Chapter II. Five methods are-outlined as follows: the market analysis technique, the national income method, the city analysis approach, the econometric model, and the gravity model technique. The gravity model technique is selected for emphasis in this thesis. Chapter II presents in turn a brief history of the evolution of the gravity model as a traffic predicting device. It is shown that the gravity model is a valid predictive device for forecasting the gross [...]