Productivity and Efficiency for Airlines

An efficient air transport system is critical to countries attaining and sustaining healthy economies in an increasingly interconnected world economy. This volume 5 of Advances in Airline Economics includes literature surveys and original empirical research examining airline efficiency in the twenty first century.

In today’s competitive environment, airlines are doing everything they can to increase efficiencies while improving productivity. Productivity and Efficiency Analysis of Airlines: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach helps achieve these goals through identifying and explaining the best strategies for measuring airline performance. Each chapter measures airline performance through the model of data envelopment analysis (DEA), as well as other models, such as stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), where applicable. The book thoroughly discusses topics such as financial performance, greenhouse gas management, and complex airline data analysis, employing appropriate models for each. Model methodologies are also discussed. The in-depth coverage is useful for all audiences, including students with a basic understanding of models, researchers, and airline operators and management. Productivity and Efficiency Analysis of Airlines: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach provides codes for various data software, helping readers generate results and quantify efficient practices. These results provide airline decision makers with the essential information they need to create better policies and avoid underperforming practices. Comprehensive overview of the key strategies for measuring productivity and efficiency of airlines Guides users in generating airline performance results, with a focus on the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model Features software codes useful for generating empirical results, and best practices, promoting quality policy and management decisions

Major institutional, regulatory, and structural changes have occurred in international air transport during the past two decades. Many countries have deregulated their domestic airline industries and open skies continental blocs have formed in Europe and North America A movement is now underway to create a liberalized continental bloc in Australasia. International air transport has been substantially liberalized due to the diminishing role of lATA as an industry cartel, and via a series of liberalized bilateral agreements signed between many countries, including the u.s. and UK Increased liberalization and continentalization have induced major airlines to create global service networks through inter-carrier alliances. And all these changes are intensifYing competition between major carriers in both domestic and international markets. The increased competition and economic recession in the early 1990s led many airlines to massive fmancial losses, forcing them to undertake major restructuring to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Although it is important for an airline to map out proper strategies in the globalizing airline industry, the ultimate ability of a carrier to swvive and prosper in increasingly competitive markets greatly depends on its productivity and cost competitiveness.

Covers low-cost carrier growth in Japan, competition against full service hub carriers in the Middle East, aviation market liberalization in Central Asia, high-speed-rail and airline competition in China, air transport and tourism in Asia and Australia, airline performance and outsourcing, airports development, and airport-airline cooperation.

This book focuses on the factors that support the strengths of international airlines in general and the Asian airline carriers in particular. Defining the quality of human capital as the level of education and the competence of airline employees, it analyzes the efficiency of 39 airlines in various regions, both in terms of production and cost structures. It argues that, despite Asia’s well-developed and globally competitive manufacturing sector, aided by open market practices, its overall service sector still lags far behind more advanced economies. As this does not stop Asia-based carriers from generally being more efficient than their counterparts in Europe and North America, the book investigates how competitiveness analysis of the airline industry can help Asian policymakers better prepare for the liberalization of the service sector, given how crucial this aspect is for the future growth of the Asia-Pacific region. Efficiency and Competitiveness of International Airlines offers a valuable resource for policymakers, airline employees, and researchers and students of microeconomics.

When Harold Fried, et al. published The Measurement of Productive Efficiency: Techniques and Applications with OUP in 1993, the book received a great deal of professional interest for its accessible treatment of the rapidly growing field of efficiency and productivity analysis. The first several chapters, providing the background, motivation, and theoretical foundations for this topic, were the most widely recognized. In this tight, direct update, these same editors have compiled over ten years of the most recent research in this changing field, and expanded on those seminal chapters. The book will guide readers from the basic models to the latest, cutting-edge extensions, and will be reinforced by references to classic and current theoretical and applied research. It is intended for professors and graduate students in a variety of fields, ranging from economics to agricultural economics, business administration, management science, and public administration. It should also appeal to public servants and policy makers engaged in business performance analysis or regulation.

International Applications of Productivity and Efficiency Analysis features a complete range of techniques utilized in frontier analysis, including extensions of existing techniques and the development of new techniques. Another feature is that most of the contributions use panel data in a variety of approaches. Finally, the range of empirical applications is at least as great as the range of techniques, and many of the applications are of considerable policy relevance.

In recent years, the European air transport industry has seen a number of important changes, with more on the horizon. This comprehensive work presents a multi-faceted analysis of the air industry in Europe, how it has developed in recent years, and how it is set to develop further into the future.

Claudia Lehmann explores service productivity from the providers, customer and operations perspective in the German airport industry using a solid empirical foundation. Available service productivity concepts, methods, measurements and their ability to overcome the emphasized problems are discussed, suggesting ways on how to deal with them. The insights of this book deliver considerable value for both management and academia.

This handbook serves as a complement to the Handbook on Data Envelopment Analysis (eds, W.W. Cooper, L.M. Seiford and J, Zhu, 2011, Springer) in an effort to extend the frontier of DEA research. It provides a comprehensive source for the state-of-the art DEA modeling on internal structures and network DEA. Chapter 1 provides a survey on two-stage network performance decomposition and modeling techniques. Chapter 2 discusses the pitfalls in network DEA modeling. Chapter 3 discusses efficiency decompositions in network DEA under three types of structures, namely series, parallel and dynamic. Chapter 4 studies the determination of the network DEA frontier. In chapter 5 additive efficiency decomposition in network DEA is discussed. An approach in scale efficiency measurement in two-stage networks is presented in chapter 6. Chapter 7 further discusses the scale efficiency decomposition in two stage networks. Chapter 8 offers a bargaining game approach to modeling two-stage networks. Chapter 9 studies shared resources and efficiency decomposition in two-stage networks. Chapter 10 introduces an approach to computing the technical efficiency scores for a dynamic production network and its sub-processes. Chapter 11 presents a slacks-based network DEA. Chapter 12 discusses a DEA modeling technique for a two-stage network process where the inputs of the second stage include both the outputs from the first stage and additional inputs to the second stage. Chapter 13 presents an efficiency measurement methodology for multi-stage production systems. Chapter 14 discusses network DEA models, both static and dynamic. The discussion also explores various useful objective functions that can be applied to the models to find the optimal allocation of resources for processes within the black box, that are normally invisible to DEA. Chapter 15 provides a comprehensive review of various type network DEA modeling techniques. Chapter 16 presents shared resources models for deriving aggregate measures of bank-branch performance, with accompanying component measures that make up that aggregate value. Chapter 17 examines a set of manufacturing plants operating under a single umbrella, with the objective being to use the component or function measures to decide what might be considered as each plant’s core business. Chapter 18 considers problem settings where there may be clusters or groups of DMUs that form a hierarchy. The specific case of a set off electric power plants is examined in this context. Chapter 19 models bad outputs in two-stage network DEA. Chapter 20 presents an application of network DEA to performance measurement of Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. Chapter 21 presents an application of a two-stage network DEA model for examining the performance of 30 U.S. airline companies. Chapter 22 then presents two distinct network efficiency models that are applied to engineering systems.

7 take advantage of the panel structure of their data to control for possible errors of specifica tion in their models. It is interesting to note that the econometric and DEA methods may be closer than some of their respective advocates seem to believe. Several of the studies show that the former as well as the latter can be effectively used to assess the relative effi ciency of groups of firms or individual firms, and one of them explicitly compare results arising from both (Fecher et al.). Econometric techniques can also be nonparametric and applied to estimating cost or production frontiers (and not only "average" functions), while ultimately DEA should be amenable to statistical inference. Perhaps the most valuable feature of all the analyses is their care and ingenuity in putting together the data, measuring variables, and pulling out relevant information. Many of them are not content with an overall output measure, but endeavor to manage with less aggregated measures. Nearly all also include in the estimated models a number of auxiliary variables intended to control for specific attributes of outputs, inputs, or production techniques, and other characteristics of firms.

Airline Operations and Management: A Management Textbook is a survey of the airline industry, mostly from a managerial perspective. It integrates and applies the fundamentals of several management disciplines, particularly economics, operations, marketing and finance, in developing the overview of the industry. The focus is on tactical, rather than strategic, management that is specialized or unique to the airline industry. The primary audiences for this textbook are both senior and graduate students of airline management, but it should also be useful to entry and junior level airline managers and professionals seeking to expand their knowledge of the industry beyond their own functional area.

This volume examines the role that airports play in economic development and land values, the regulation and economic efficiency of airports, airport pricing and competition, and the role played by airports in influencing airline operations and networks.

'This Handbook is a stellar compilation of up-to-date knowledge about the important topics in transport economics. Authors include the very best in the field, and they cover the most important topics for today's research and policy applications. Individual chapters contain sound, readable, well referenced explanations of each topic's history and current status. I cannot think of a better place to start for anyone wanting to become current in the field or in any of its parts.' – Kenneth Small, University of California-Irvine, US Bringing together insights and perspectives from close to 70 of the world's leading experts in the field, this timely Handbook provides an up-to-date guide to the most recent and state-of-the-art advances in transport economics. The comprehensive coverage includes topics such as the relationship between transport and the spatial economy, recent advances in travel demand analysis, the external costs of transport, investment appraisal, pricing, equity issues, competition and regulation, the role of public–private partnerships and the development of policy in local bus services, rail, air and maritime transport. This Handbook is designed both for use on postgraduate and advanced undergraduate courses and as a reference for anyone working in the field. It also complements the textbook Principles of Transport Economics.

The end of the twentieth century saw remarkable changes in the way that economic regulation was viewed. There occurred a liberalization of attitude and something of a withdrawal of the state from its interventionist role. These changes were particularly pronounced in the context of transport, where the long-standing tradition had been one of market intervention by the government. The aim of this book, first published in 1991, is to examine the outcomes of deregulation on the international airline industry, and to consider whether the experiences of market liberalization reveal any common threads. In particular, whether they reveal any universal indications of how underlying transport markets function; how management responds to new stimuli; the degree of protection needed by transport users; and nature of the transition process from regulation to liberalization.

Today, business success depends on making great decisions – and making them fast. Leading organizations apply sophisticated business analytics tools and technologies to evaluate vast amounts of data, glean new insights, and increase both the speed and quality of decision making. In The Best Thinking and Practices in Business Analytics from the Decision Sciences Institute , DSI has compiled award-winning and award-nominated contributions from its most recent conferences: papers that illuminate exceptionally high-value applications and research on analytics for decision-making. These papers have appeared in no other DSI collection. Explore them here, and you’ll discover powerful new opportunities for competitive advantage through analytics. For all business, academic, and organizational professionals concerned with the science of more effective decision-making; and for undergraduate students, graduate students, and certification candidates in all related fields.

While intercity passenger transport counts for about 2% of the total passenger transport volume the share of the total passenger kilometers traveled is estimated more than one third. In many countries the major part of intercity transport is performed by car and air and as a result, the contribution to the carbon footprint is substantially higher than the share of overall passenger transport performance. This creates a challenge to develop a sustainable organization of intercity transport which requires a true joint effort of policy makers, industry sectors and households. This presupposes that all options for reducing the carbon footprint of the transport modes – car, air and rail – are fully exploited through modern propulsion technology, use of regenerative energy and efficient organization of transport processes. Basic conditions for meeting this requirement are an incentive compatible public framework of regulation, taxation, charging and education, the private willingness to adjust to new behavioral patterns and a consequent push of technological progress towards energy and CO2 savings. This book begins with an international comparison of intercity transport and the current state of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of this transport segment. A focus is given to comparing the situation in the EU, the US and Japan while describing the more recent development of intercity transport in China, followed by an analysis of intercity transport policies and their contribution to meet the global climate change issues. This book will be of interest to researchers in transportation economics and policy, as well as civil engineering and planning.