Swarm of airports fight for flights and passengers.

• Position: Interview with geography professor Al Stuart - North Carolina - Interview

BNC: You found that the smaller airports in Eastern North Carolina substantially overlap in customers they serve.

Stuart: We found overlap among all 14 of the state's commercial airports. Even the three big ones - Charlotte Douglas, Raleigh-Durham and Piedmont Triad - overlapped a little. But down east, Kinston, Pitt-Greenville, New Bern and Jacksonville tremendously overlapped. From a pure economic perspective, it seems inefficient.

Would Eastern North Carolina get better service if smaller airports consolidated?

It's hypothetically possible, but it ain't gonna happen. Under deregulation, airlines have gone to hub-and-feeder systems, and most flights out of small airports serve as feeders. If you could have one regional airport down east, more airlines might be willing to provide more direct flights. But that would mean several small ones closing, which would create a political firestorm. The county, state and Federal Aviation Administration pay for building airports, and that's subject to considerable political pressure, with concerns about community pride and economic development.

The same pressures that led to Global TransPark being in Kinston?

Yeah, if that's going to work, it should be in Raleigh, Charlotte or Greensboro. How many pickles and cucumbers are you going to fly out of Kinston? This is an instance where you have two ships passing in the night. One is public policy trying to bring economic development to rural North Carolina. The other is business, which has to be competitive and efficient and have access to markets and skilled labor. If you have a limited supply of manure, you put it on fertile ground, not barren ground. Global TransPark is a classic example of dumping a load of manure on hard clay. All that's going to happen is it's going to wash away.

Short of closure, can anything be done to address the overlap down east?

The airports can badger and lobby the airlines, but it's up to the airlines to decide what to do. The airport boards may be reluctant to harass them for fear of losing the service they have.

You found that 57% of the state's traffic was transfers from one flight to another. Is that high?

It's high. That's the Charlotte Douglas effect. US Airways accounts for 80% of Charlotte Douglas' traffic, and almost 80% of its traffic through there is transient. That's two-thirds of the whole state's traffic.

Charlotte leads in percentage of vacation travelers, at 33%, but the portion of business travelers is higher...