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This chapter uses airline data on fares, traffic, and flight characteristics to estimate a series of fare equations for international flights. The results are used to examine the role of international competition as a determinant of fares along international flights originating or departing from the United States. Findings suggest that actual and potential competition are important determinants of international airfares. We interpret these results as indicating that pricing behavior along US–international routes is consistent with the theory of imperfect contestability.

Airline travel is composed of business and nonbusiness travelers, each with different preferences that give rise to differences in demand elasticities and substitution not only across airlines but also airports. In this study, we develop and estimate a model of airline wherein consumers choose which airports and airline to use that allows for unobserved differences between travelers (e.g., business and nonbusiness travelers). The results point to the role that airports themselves play in the ultimate selection of a flight, and that there are strong interactive effects between the airlines’ networks and the consumers’ preferences across airports.

The rise of Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways in the Middle East (collectively referred to as “ME3”) has been absolutely dramatic. How should other full-service carriers respond? This study takes a look at how one carrier, Singapore Airlines, has responded and may offer clues to how others may choose to respond. Facing ME3’s ascent in service quality and rapid capacity expansion, Singapore Airlines stuck to its niche as a premium carrier and refrained from tit-for-tat type competition. It managed to command a fare premium in select markets even in the presence of ME3, but had to sacrifice growth in its passenger count. This offers valuable lessons for other full-service carriers.

This chapter provides an overview of the current political regulations on aviation’s climate relevant emissions in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and of the planned regulations in other parts of the world. In a next step, the cost impacts of most of these regulations on air freight will be quantified. This way, the economic impacts of environmental regulations on air freight can be estimated.

The main results indicate that cost impacts on air freight services induced by political measures for the reduction of aviation’s climate relevant emissions turn out to be small. This is true for both local emission charges on nitrous oxide (NO _X ) and hydrocarbon (HC) emissions which are in force at a number of European airports and the European emissions trading scheme for the limitation of CO₂ emissions.

Service quality has become an important area for competition among Chinese carriers. This paper focuses on studying the relationship between customer satisfaction measured by customer complaints and their expectation of the on-time performance of Chinese carriers and how the customer complaints affect the financial performance of carriers. By using a quarterly balanced panel data set covering six large listed carriers, the empirical results show that an increase in actual on-time performance reduces customer complaints. However, an increase in expected on-time performance significantly raises customer complaints. An increase in customer complaint reduces the yield measured as revenue per revenue ton kilometer (RTK) of carriers.

This chapter analyses the efficiency of African airlines using a two-stage network DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) model. Network DEA models usually take into account the production process with intermediate inputs derived from the first stage and a second stage that departs from it. This fundamental feature enables one to view the airline production process as a carry-over activity. The analysis covers the 2010–2013 period. The relative efficiency ranks are presented and policy implications are derived.

The relationship between airports and airlines is very interesting from an economics perspective, and analysis of this relationship is wide open for new research endeavors. For instance, airport and airline interactions can be viewed as a zero-sum game of deciding, say, airport landing charges, while at the same time both entities have an incentive making a joint effort to enhance their ability to generate passenger demand and to contribute to growing regional economies. Within this theoretical framework, their relationship consists of not only a binary choice of conflict or cooperation, but also suggests the possibility of complex mixtures of conflict and cooperation. While understanding the interdependence of airports and airlines is an important issue in transportation economics, research examining the complexity of airport and airline relationships is relatively new to the field. This chapter contributes to this research area, in part, by introducing one very interesting example of an airport and airline relationship that considers an element of conflict and cooperation. Specifically, this chapter examines the economic consequences of a risk sharing contract. Analysis of the risk sharing contract recognizes the relevance of microeconomic theories, such as contract theory and principal–agent theory and reveals how these concepts can be applied to traditional transport economics. Predictions of risk sharing between airlines and airports using these theories are derived using numerical examples. Findings reveal that the risk-sharing agreement based on the Noto Airport Load Factor Guarantee Mechanism (LFGM) contract enables the airport side and the airline side not only to share the monetary consequences of demand fluctuation, but also to secure air flights from a local airport to Tokyo, to jointly enhance their various demand-inducing efforts, and to increase their utilities in order to meet the common target they set in the contract. With the LFGM contract, both sides have consistently maintained the air transport network in a relatively low demand area for more than 10 years without significant outside financial assistance. The findings from this chapter also contribute to better understanding the complex relationships among aviation entities, to the recognition of importance and potential to design properly the airport and airline contract, and to the advancement of economic and public policy analysis of this sector.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members want to efficiently promote the flow of commodities and personnel within its service areas under given limited resources. Based on panel data from 2007 to 2014, this study applies the output-oriented data envelopment analysis method and focuses on the disaggregated output efficiencies of 42 ASEAN airports. Results show that the international airports of ASEAN members have significantly better output efficiency for passenger and movement output than regional airports. This work provides a relatively fair perspective in evaluating ASEAN’s airport operating efficiency. It helps policymakers measure the frontier forward or backward shift of an airport over the research period, in order to reveal the characteristics of airport efficiency and to present a new interpretation along with managerial implications.

The relationship between airline and airport is complex, fascinating, and wide open for new research endeavors. In Volume 6 of the series, we conducted the analyses of risk-sharing contract between airline and airport from numerical risk balance assessment and incomplete contract theory perspectives based on an interesting real example of risk-sharing contracts, the Noto Airport Load Factor Guarantee Mechanism (LFGM) contract in Japan.

In this chapter, we further advance the analyses of risk-sharing contracts, based on the real example of Noto LFGM contract, from the perspectives of game theory and principal-agent theory. The risk-sharing arrangements, such as LFGM contract, are relevant to the rapidly changing business environment in Asia’s aviation industries.

We conduct a two-stage game analysis. The first phase is the contract negotiation phase and the second phase is the effort-making phase after signing the contract. We show that the two parties can attain a Pareto optimal utility level by bargaining a simple linear risk-sharing contract in the contract negotiation phase based on the equilibrium effort levels in the effort-making phase.