Overview
Aviation Economics will provide a broad perspective of how economic theories and financial concepts relate and apply to the air transport industry. You will develop a critical awareness of the economic principles and theories that underpin air transport management and the concepts of demand and supply, elasticity, and regulation and deregulation as they apply to airlines and airports. In this unit, you will examine the inter-related nature of air transport and other sectors of an economy, and the interactions of air transport with broader socio-economic, tourism and environmental issues.
Details
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites
Pre-requisites: AVAT11013 Introduction to Aviation or AVAT11002 Basic Aeronautical Knowledge and AVAT11008 Introduction to Aviation Management and ECON11026 Principles of Economics.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).
Offerings For Term 2 - 2026
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
All University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
You may wish to view these policies:
- Grades and Results Policy
- Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework)
- Review of Grade Procedure
- Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - Domestic Students
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - International Students
- Student Refund and Credit Balance Policy and Procedure
- Student Feedback - Compliments and Complaints Policy and Procedure
- Information and Communications Technology Acceptable Use Policy and Procedure
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Feedback from Tutorial observations
Students requested more guided support for quantitative topics such as elasticity calculations, cost curves, and pricing decisions.
Additional worked examples and practice problem sets with solutions should be provided.
Feedback from Student evaluation data and grading observations
Students appeared to need clearer guidance on assessment expectations, including what constituted a strong answer in both written and calculation-based tasks.
Clearer assessment instructions, marking criteria, and annotated exemplars should be provided to make expectations more transparent before submission.
Feedback from Student evaluation feedback and grading observations
Students would benefit from a stronger, more consistent explanation of how aviation economics concepts apply to real-world airline and airport decision-making.
More aviation-specific case examples should be used across the term to demonstrate how concepts such as demand, pricing, and cost structures inform real industry decisions.