Attitudes of ageing passengers to air travel since the coronavirus pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on the demand for air transport. One passenger segment that has received relatively little attention is ageing passengers (defined as aged 65+), in spite of the fact that this group has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and in recent years has been viewed as a potential growth market. Therefore, the aim of this brief paper is to analyse the attitudes of ageing passengers by assessing air travel plans in the next 12 months, examining the factors influencing future flying decisions, and investigating the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on perceived risks and experiences associated with flying. The findings show that over 60% of ageing passengers are planning to travel by air in the next 12 months, although the nature of their trips may change. Factors such as flexible ticket booking and quarantine rules do not appear to be key drivers affecting travel decisions and within the different stages of the air journey, getting to/from the airport is perceived as the safest stage. The findings suggest that there are various COVID-19 implications for airlines and airports serving this market segment, ranging from the use of self-service technology, the generation of commercial/ancillary revenues and the design of surface access policies.     

The business passenger niche: Comparing legacy carriers and southwest during a national recession

We examine how legacy and low-cost air carriers’ roles in serving business passengers in the US changed during the global economic recession from 2007. Quarterly data is examined to test the impact of a recession on the air travel behavior. We find that since 2007 business passengers represent a declining proportion of legacy carriers’ passenger volume, while they represent an increasing proportion of Southwest’s passengers. This trend suggests that Southwest’s market niche has shifted, and that the airline now plays a role similar to that of legacy carriers.     

Business travelers’ ticketing,refund, and exchange behavior

This study investigates when and why business travelers make changes to their airline itineraries. Results are based on tickets purchased over a 9-month period by employees of a university in Atlanta, US. The ability to track repeat passengers purchases across time allows analysis of how passenger cancellation behavior differs by frequency of travel as well as by carrier. Results indicate that frequent travelers and those purchasing from Delta versus AirTran are more likely to request ticketing changes. Other factors influencing cancellation behavior include the time from ticket purchase, time before flight departure, and whether the itinerary is for the outbound or inbound portion of a trip.     

A ticket to ride: Evolving landscapes of air travel accessibility in the United States

During the past decade, air passenger service in the United States has been exposed to numerous carrier bankruptcies, antitrust investigations, mergers, labor problems and a massive increase in competition. These internal elements, combined with the rising costs of fuel and the threat of terrorism combine to make a relatively uncertain air travel landscape for both passengers and operators. Moreover, these dynamics have generated significant geographical shifts in airline route structures and airports serviced by commercial carriers. These factors, combined with increasing levels of consumer access to fare and routing information, have altered the landscape of air travel accessibility in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to examine issues of consumer air travel accessibility through an analysis of three critical measures: flight segments, flight time and ticket costs. In addition, a typology of air passenger accessibility is generated for the 156 busiest commercial airports in the United States using these three measures. Results suggest significant local and regional biases in time and cost, relative to distance, for many US markets.     

Managing valuable Taiwanese airline passengers using knowledge discovery in database techniques

Taiwanese domestic airline passenger loads have declined over the past decade, and the inauguration of the Taiwan high-speed rail service in 2007 has further intensified the competition facing the airlines. Gaining and retaining valuable passengers thus has become essential in maintaining domestic airline profits in the increasingly competitive transportation market. This study develops a knowledge discovery in database process, including the recency, frequency, and monetary model and the C5.0 decision tree. The former is used to assess passenger value, while C5.0 is used to mine demographic, travel behavior, and critical service quality information for valuable passengers. The results identify valuable passenger characteristics that can help Taiwanese airlines maximize their number and retention.     

Predicting the impact of Trans Java Toll Roads on demand for intercity air travel in Indonesia

This paper aims to explore the factors influencing a potential air passenger shift to autos due to the completion of the Trans Java Toll Road and an increase in airfares. The study focuses on intercity trips for nonbusiness purposes. A face-to-face interview survey of 751 air passengers was conducted in three main airports on Java Island, Indonesia. Both the theory of planned behavior and the discrete choice model were applied to understand the factors for influencing toll road use among air passengers. The empirical results reveal that psychological factors, consisting of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived moral obligations significantly influenced intentions to use the toll road. Meanwhile, perceived control of external resources was essential for airline passengers in their intention to use toll roads. Sociodemographic factors such as age, gender, income, frequency of airplane use, travel time, and cost also significantly influenced the decision to drive. Female, older passengers, high-income passengers, and frequent flyers were more likely to continue flying. The finding confirms that the Trans Java Toll Road affected a decline in air demand on Java Island. However, traveling with family members, rather than airfare hikes, became a more substantial reason for air passengers to switch to driving the toll roads. This research found that air passengers were inelastic related to changes in travel time, while 6% were willing to switch due to airfare increases of 10%.     

The impact of carbon emission fees on passenger demand and air fares: A game theoretic approach

The implementation of an environmental market-based measure on U.S. aviation industry is studied. Under this policy, each airline pays a carbon fee for the carbon dioxide emissions it generates. The impact on ticket prices and corresponding market shares is investigated via the joint estimation of an air travel demand model and an airlines' behavior model. In the demand model, aggregate air traffic data is used to determine the marginal effects of flight attributes that are specific to itinerary, airline and airport on market share. The airline's behavior model incorporates the carbon fee in the airline marginal cost. After the implementation of the carbon policy, the increased cost forces airlines to adjust ticket prices in order to maximize profits. The results obtained by the proposed model indicate a moderate price increase which strongly depends on the per tonne carbon price. Air travel demand falls from 2.4% to 21% depending on the carbon price level.     

Supply-and-demand models for exploring relationships between smaller airports and neighboring hub airports in the U.S.

Airport passenger leakage is the phenomenon of air passengers choosing to travel longer distances to access more extensive air services offered by airlines at an out-of-region hub (or, substitute) airport, instead of using their local airports. Airport leakage can cause further reduction in services offered by airlines at a local airport, thereby causing even further leakage, and so on, which can significantly impact an airport's role in the growth of the local economy. This paper explores the geographic and operational attributes of local-and-substitute airport pairs in the United States, explicitly accounting for the interactive feedback relationship between passenger volumes and air service characteristics that contribute to the onset, persistence, and exacerbation of airport passenger leakage. A two-stage least squares regression model of air passenger demand at small- and medium-sized airports is first presented, where local passengers may travel by vehicle to larger, out-of-region hub airports. The results confirm that airfare and passenger volume relationships exist between the local and substitute airport pairs included in the dataset, and that lower airfares at the substitute airport have a greater impact on airport choices made by larger travel groups. They also suggest the existence of positive feedback in that if an airport attracts increasingly smaller passenger numbers with fewer air services and fewer air services with fewer passengers, without external intervention airport leakage impacts may be irreversible and exacerbate over time. A conceptual market share equilibrium analysis is used to illustrate the mechanisms of a direct two-way feedback relationship between passenger volumes at a local airport and air service characteristics at both the local and substitute airports. With data, this quantitative framework can help guide airport planners in further assessing and verifying suspected passenger leakage issues at their airport. The results suggest that without intervention, airport leakage impacts may be difficult to reverse; further exacerbating the trend are technological advancements that make driving cheaper and easier (connected and autonomous vehicles). However, the results can also guide planners in choosing the types and degrees of infrastructure investments and airline incentives that may be used to expand or retain air services to attract passengers.     

Latent class models of international air carrier choice

This paper uses a market segmentation approach to identify airline passengers’ potential segments and preferences toward international air carriers. The modeling approaches consist of the stated preference method and the latent class model. The stated choice experiments were designed based on service attributes in the international airline choice context. Empirical data was collected from airline passengers who have flown from Taipei to Tokyo or from Taipei to Hong Kong. The latent class model accommodating preference heterogeneity outperforms the multinomial logit model as indication of a better approach to analyze airline choice behavior. The latent class model with individual socioeconomic and trip characteristics in segment membership functions also improved model fit relative to the corresponding latent class model without individual characteristics. The values of willingness to pay for service attribute improvements vary across international air routes and segments. Passengers are willing to pay more for better service quality. In order to develop effective marketing and operational strategies for the international air travel market, this study highlights the importance of exploring airline choice behaviors by routes and segments.     

An assessment of air passenger confidence a year into the COVID-19 crisis: A segmentation analysis of passengers in Norway

The COVID-19 crisis has become the most intense and long-lasting in the history of aviation. There is already a significant literature on the immediate impact of the outbreak, as well as on speculation on the future evolution of the industry. This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by assessing a year into the crisis the demand related aspects and passenger behavioural impacts of the pandemic. Specifically, the paper aims to identify discrete market segments of air passengers according to their shared attitudes and preferences about air travel in light of the COVID-19 crisis, as well as past behaviour and future travel intentions. To achieve this, we analyse data from a large (n = 2096) online questionnaire survey of air passengers in Norway. The cluster analysis identifies four distinct passenger segments, with each displaying varying attitudes, behaviours, and levels of concern about air travel. One of these groups, described as the ‘Apprehensive Elders’, were identified as having the highest level of concern about flying, and subsequently showed a sharp decline in their intention to travel in the future. Another group, termed the ‘Cautious Commuters’, showed similarly enhanced levels of concerns about flying, but maintained a high propensity to fly following the pandemic despite these concerns. Regarding possible interventions to increase confidence in flying in the future, across all segments the data shows a clear preference for more ‘traditional’ active interventions, including wearing of face masks and enforcement of physical distancing, over and above passive or technological interventions. Norway represents a valuable case as a possible signal for future policy and practice in relation to the recovery of air travel following the pandemic. The findings have important implications for air transport managers and decision makers in terms of managing the perceptions and expectations of different passenger groups as air travel begins to return.     

Homogeneous service with heterogeneous products: Relationships among airline ticket fares and purchase fences

A fare table derived from homogeneous service is essential for revenue management applications in the airline industry. Restrictions or so-called fences are usually regarded as a useful tool to differentiate homogeneous seat service. Nevertheless, the relationships among fares and fences are not yet clear. This study aims to investigate passengers’ preferences on the choice of ticket alternatives describing by fares and fences and using Taiwan domestic air travel as an example. Regarding the attributes that an airline ticket may be attached such as departure time, booking time, ticket validity, changing fee, refund and fare, stated preference questionnaires are developed with multiple hypothetical scenarios for respondents to select in the experiment. 398 valid samples are collected for the logit model analysis. With the use of mixed logit model to accommodate both passengers’ heterogeneity and also the issue of relevant alternatives in the experiment, the results show statistical significance of all applied attributes with correct signs. In addition, passengers possess different attitudes on the fence of booking time, ticket validity, changing fee, and fare. Willingness-to-pay of each fence is further calculated to ultimately generate a fare table based on the combination of fences for practice use.     

Analysis of Iranian passengers' behavior in choosing type of carrier in international air travel to East Asia

Increased demand for East Asia flights from Tehran has intensified competition between Iranian and foreign carriers. In addition, the entrance of low-cost carriers (LCC) will make this competitive market even more intense. In this condition, carriers are striving to gain more market share by improving services and discounting their fares. Therefore, analyzing air travel demand is valuable for carriers' long term and short term planning. This study empirically investigates passengers' behavior in choosing five types of carriers in many groups of passengers using multinomial logit (MNL) and nested logit (NL) models. The data were collected through the stated preference (SP) questionnaire designed based on orthogonal main-effect. The main survey was conducted in the Imam Khomeini International (IKI) airport in July 2013 where 480 questionnaires were collected through face-to-face interviews. The results show that the ticket fare, the possibility of travel on desired date and time, international air travel experience, Frequent-flyer program (FFP) membership status, marital status, and gender are statistically significant contributors in explaining carrier choice. Interaction effects between trip purpose and ticket fare are statistically significant in choosing carriers. The results further indicate that business travelers are more willing to pay than non-business travelers for flights on desired date and time, although varying by type of carrier.     

The effect of airline service quality on passengers’ behavioural intentions: a Korean case study

This paper seeks to improving our understanding of air passengers’ decision-making processes by testing a conceptual model that considers service expectation, service perception, service value, passenger satisfaction, airline image, and behavioural intentions simultaneously. For this testing, path analysis via maximum likelihood estimator is applied to data collected from Korean international air passengers. Service value, passenger satisfaction, and airline image are each found to have a direct effect on air passengers’ decision-making processes.     

Supporting the needs of special assistance (including PRM) passengers: An international survey of disabled air passenger rights legislation

Passengers who require special assistance at airports and on aircraft represent one of the fastest growing demographics for aviation worldwide. At some airports, annual growth in PRM (persons with reduced mobility) traffic is six times greater than the overall rate of passenger growth yet barriers to accessible air travel remain and disabled passengers continue to exhibit a lower propensity to fly than other travellers. In an attempt to aid disabled passengers’ accessibility to air travel, countries have introduced dedicated air passenger rights and consumer protection legislation which seeks to specifically address the needs of disabled travellers. These regulations typically state minimum service standards and levels of service provision that must be provided by air transport operators to enable disabled travellers to access air travel on an equal basis to other passengers. These legal interventions, however, have been developed on a country-by-country basis and this has created a lack of international regulatory alignment. This paper reports on the findings of an international survey of disabled air passenger rights legislation in 47 countries covering 20 aviation markets (the single market in the European Union and 19 other States). It identifies the differences in regulatory frameworks, highlights their implications for consumers and ultimately concludes by recommending the formation of more harmonised global policy making to better support the needs of special assistance passengers and facilitate their greater mobility by air.     

Determinants of passengers’ choice of airline check-in services: A case study of American,Australian, Korean,and Taiwanese passengers

This paper investigates factors that influence whether air travelers’ choose conventional counter or self-service check-in, including kiosk and web check-in. It uses data collected from American, Australian, Korean, and Taiwanese passengers. The data suggests that a passenger’s choice of check-in service is strongly dependent on nationality and previous experiences of checking-in; i.e. a cultural bias exists in the behavior of passengers using airline check-in services. Taiwanese passengers prefer to use the conventional counter check-in service but Korean, Australian and American air travelers use more self-service check-in facilities. The analysis also highlights that passengers’ perceptions of the attributes of the check-in service significantly determine their choice of check-in option.     

The impact of flight delays on passenger demand and societal welfare

US airline passengers increasingly have access to flight delay information from online sources. As a result, air passenger travel decisions can be expected to be influenced by delay information. In addition, delays affect airline operations, resulting in increased block times on routes and, in general, higher carrier costs and airfares. This paper examines the impact of flight delays on both passenger demand and airfares. Delays are calculated against scheduled block times as well as against more idealized feasible flight times. Based on econometric estimations, welfare impacts of flight delays are calculated. We find that flight delays on a route reduce passenger demand and raise airfares, producing significant decreases in both consumer and producer welfare. Since producer welfare effects are estimated to be three times as large as consumer welfare effects, we conclude that from an economic efficiency rationale, airlines should be required to pay for the bulk of flight delay remediation efforts.     

A voice in the skies: Listening to airline passenger preferences

This study aims to identify the impact levels and priorities in the service expectations that passengers have when identifying a preferred airline. The results are based on probabilities and impacts, and can help airlines to accurately understand the preference criteria of their passengers. The priorities of the passengers may differ according to the airline chosen; therefore, the probabilities shown in this study can inform senior airline managers about the passenger perspective. This study uses the Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis-2 (SMAA-2) method. SMAA-2 identifies the priorities and impact levels of passengers’ expectations on airline selection, and the ranking of alternative firms according to the probability. According to the obtained results, Airline 3 (AF₃) is the most preferred airline with the highest confidence rate. This airline operates based on a low-cost model that allows passengers to choose additional services for additional charges. The passenger expectations that have the highest impact on the preference when selecting an airline are 1) ticket prices, 2) punctuality, and 3) booking convenience. Free in-flight food and beverages, the variety and quality of the food and beverages, and voyager miles programs for loyal customers are found to have no impact on the ranking of airlines. The expectations identified by the passengers in this study are related to the outcome quality dimension, with services dominated by flexible features. The findings of this study define the passenger as a rational decision maker who is price sensitive.     

Mapping causalities of airline dynamics in long-haul air transport markets

The introduction of low-cost air transport services to short-haul routes has significantly shaped the structure of this market segment. Recent research investigates and discusses the transferability of the low-cost carrier business model to long-haul routes and identifies respective challenges such as lower cost advantages over the competing full-service network business model. Our paper complements the existing research with a review of airline dynamics in long-haul air transport markets and the subsequent development of a causal loop diagram of the transatlantic air transport market using systems thinking. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of specific characteristics regarding airline operations in the transatlantic air transport market to investigate the market potential of long-haul low-cost carriers competing with full-service network carriers in this market. We implement these characteristics in a causal loop diagram which comprises the most important elements of and causalities within the long-haul air transport market that affect the development of these elements. These include the generation of transatlantic air transport demand, passenger choice, and airline ticket price and fleet development. The causal loop diagram serves as a framework for qualitative investigation of the market potential of long-haul low-cost services. The paper proves systems thinking to be a feasible approach to map causalities based on knowledge from scientific literature.     

Investigating the effects of economies of scope on firms’ pricing behavior: Empirical evidence from the US domestic airline industry

This study investigates to what extent cross-product (belly cargo) output affects (passenger ticket) prices in the US domestic airline industry. The empirical analysis indicates that greater cargo volumes generally result in lower air fares, presumably as a result of the airlines’ realization of economies of scope. This magnitude of this price effect, however, depends on certain firm and route market characteristics. The findings of this study add to extant research on economies of scope, multi-product yield management and airline pricing and provide important insights for policy makers and airline managers alike.     

铁路、民航客运市场竞争焦点及对策探讨

由于民航在机场建设和航线开发上的不断发展,使750～1500km范围内的客运市场成为与铁路竞争的焦点。随着民航票价的下浮,运营成本和人工成本的进一步降低,将对铁路形成更大的挑战。为此,铁路必须明确客运市场竞争重点,通过采取加强管理、降低戍本,继续提速改造、提高运输质量等措施,提高铁路的综合竞争力。