Methodology for Airline Performance and Ownership Structure Assessment: A Mathematical Programming Approach

The goal of this paper is twofold; first, to evaluate the performance of the world's 24 largest airlines and, second, to investigate the impact of airline ownership structure on performance. The sample investigated in this paper consists of the world's largest 24 international airlines representing different ownership structures (private, public and mixed public-private), while the final data used refers to a 12 year period (1991-2002); analysis of this panel data set is based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a widely adopted non-parametric efficiency assessment technique. Results indicate that both private and mixed public-private airlines tend to perform better when compared to public airlines. Interestingly, while the result of public ownership airlines demonstrating inferior performance is consistent, the differentiation between private and mixed public-private airline performance depends on model specification. For example, when using a multi-output DEA specification with passenger kilometers and freight ton kilometers as output measures, private airlines appear more effective. On the other hand, when using freight ton kilometers as the only output measure, mixed public-private airlines perform better. This is a finding of significant practical importance, since it indicates that policy findings and recommendations depend upon modeling specification.

• Corporate Authors:

  World Conference on Transport Research Society

  Secretariat, 14 Avenue Berthelot
  69363 Lyon cedex 07,   France 
• Authors:
  • Tselenti, Natalia
  • Karlaftis, Matthew G
• Conference:
  • 11th World Conference on Transport Research
  • Location: Berkeley CA, United States
  • Date: 2007-6-24 to 2007-6-28
• Publication Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 27p
• Monograph Title: 11th World Conference on Transport Research

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aircraft by ownership; Airlines; International airports; Ownership; Private airports; Programming (Mathematics)
• Uncontrolled Terms: Data envelopment analysis; Effectiveness
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Aviation; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01117414
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 30 2008 12:31PM