Flying Australia–Europe via China: A qualitative analysis of the factors affecting travelers' choice of Chinese carriers using online comments data

Recently, Chinese carriers entered the Australia–Europe route, a market currently served by several established airlines. The paper aims to explore and identify the contextual factors affecting the choice of China-based carriers for long-haul travel. The paper's innovation is in the way it uses the online comments made by readers of an aviation news article. In doing so, the paper highlights the advantages and limitations of such a data source and the full range of positive and negative perceptions about Chinese airlines as recorded by potential and actual travelers. This study highlights that in order to understand flight choice, it is worthwhile to consider the conventional itinerary choice factors in the context of the socio-cultural and historical influences. For researchers, the paper provides some evidence that air travelers apply compensatory decision rule in making airline choices. This supports the validity of the assumption of random-utility based choice models used in the study of air travel behavior.     

Exploring the network structure and nodal centrality of China’s air transport network: A complex network approach

This paper uses a complex network approach to examine the network structure and nodal centrality of individual cities in the air transport network of China (ATNC). Measures for overall network structure include degree distribution, average path length and clustering coefficient. Centrality metrics for individual cities are degree, closeness and betweenness, representing a node’s location advantage as being directly connected to others, being accessible to others, and being the intermediary between others, respectively. Results indicate that the ATNC has a cumulative degree distribution captured by an exponential function, and displays some small-world (SW) network properties with an average path length of 2.23 and a clustering coefficient of 0.69. All three centrality indices are highly correlated with socio-economic indicators of cities such as air passenger volume, population, and gross regional domestic product (GRDP). This confirms that centrality captures a crucial aspect of location advantage in the ATNC and has important implications in shaping the spatial pattern of economic activities. Most small and low-degree airports are directly connected to the largest cities with the best centrality and bypass their regional centers, and therefore sub-networks in the ATNC are less developed except for Kunming in the southwest and Urumchi in the northwest because of their strategic locations for geographic and political reasons. The ANTC is relatively young, and not as efficient and well-developed as that of the US.     

The geographic effects of US airline alliances

Code-share agreements in the airline industry allow participants the opportunity to offer service to destinations they do not physically serve. This paper concentrates on the recently proposed domestic code-share agreements between United/Delta, Continental/Northwest, and American/US Airways, six of the largest commercial carriers in the United States. Changes in destinations served as well as geographic regions of dominance based upon market share are examined. The result is a clearer view of regions of dominance for each alliance in the United States. The proposed United/Delta alliance shows an expansion across the entire United States. The Continental/Northwest alliance allows the carriers to compete with the “Big Three”. The American/US Airways proposed alliance appears to benefit US Airways (US) more than American.     

Evaluating airline efficiency: An application of Virtual Frontier Network SBM

In this paper, airline efficiency is divided into three stages: Operations Stage, Services Stage and Sales Stage. The new three-stage strategic operating framework of airline efficiency is a modification of existing models. A new model, Virtual Frontier Network SBM, is proposed to evaluate the efficiency of 22 international airlines from 2008 to 2012. The results demonstrate the following: 1. The new model can apply to a new benchmarking airline such as Scandinavian Airlines. 2. Although passenger traffic, cargo traffic and revenue decreased from 2008 to 2009, most airlines’ overall efficiency increased in the period.     

Evolution of the international air transportation country network from 2002 to 2013

In this research, we analyze the evolution of the international air transportation country network from 2002 to 2013 with two perspectives: The network’s physical topology and the functional network with traffic information. Our analysis shows that the network is scale-free and has the small-world property. The evolution of triadic properties suggests that the network gears towards symmetric, transitive closure. We find that United States, Great Britain, and France are critical from both perspectives; Surprisingly, South Africa is particularly critical from topological point of view. Furthermore, topological and functional criticality are highly correlated to the GDP of a country.     

Air deregulation in China and its impact on airline competition 1994–2012

China’s air transportation has experienced rapid growth and major reforms in the past three decades, some of which have been partially successful and are still ongoing today. The paper aims to analyze China’s air deregulation experience over the last two decades and its impact on airline competition from a geographical perspective. After the establishment of the “Big Three” in 2002, the paper reveals that there has been a trade-off between the extent of deregulation and airline competition in China because the central government has tended to strengthen the “Big Three” rather than totally open the market to private and locally owned airlines. The paper uses each airline group as the basic unit of analysis and reveals that (1) the air market has been more concentrated in the “Big Three” as a result of the process of air deregulation; (2) airline competition in over two thirds of the airports and one half of the routes has increased in the last 18 years, but the core airports and trunk routes are chiefly dominated by the “Big Three”. The peripheral airports and thin routes have been operated by private and locally owned airlines; and (3) regionally, airline competition has occurred in most airports of the eastern region, and it is more intense than in the central and western regions. But even here, competition in the eastern region has however decreased in 1994–2012. The three main contributions of the paper are: (1) the use of two measures of competition in the airline market; (2) the analysis of the historical evolution of competition; and (3) an understanding the role of the geography of competition in the Chinese airline market.     

A study of the airline boarding problem

The airline industry is currently under intense pressure to simultaneously increase efficiency, customer satisfaction, and profitability. The boarding process is one way to achieve this objective as it lends itself to adaptive changes. The purpose of this paper is to determine the most cost-effective way to board passengers and still maintain quality and customer satisfaction. We conclude that the best strategy is to use a non-traditional methodology of outside-in or some modification thereof. The findings suggest that airline managers should consider issues related to evenly distributing boarding activity throughout the aircraft, developing more effective policies for managing carry-on luggage, and using simultaneous loading through two doors.     

Evolution of air transport network of China 1930–2012

This paper analyzes the evolution process of the air transport network of China (ATNC) since 1930. Based on the network analysis results, the ATNC has significantly improved in connectivity based on (1) rising alpha, beta and gamma indices, (2) declining diameter and centre index and (3) decreasing average path length and increasing clustering coefficient. The network centralization index reveals a fluctuation phase before 1952, a pre-1980 centralization phase before the economic reform era, a centralization phase after the mid-1990s deregulation, and a decentralization phase between. The k-core decomposition method helps identify the evolution of core network and hierarchy of the ATNC over time. The spatial development model characterizes its structure change in six stages: (1) scattered development, (2) trunk line connection, (3) circular linkage, (4) hub formation, (5) a complex network structure, and (6) emerging multi-airport systems.     

Network concentration and airport congestion in a post de-regulation context: A case study of Brazil 2000–2010

This paper empirically investigates the main drivers of airline network concentration in an air transport market subject to rapid growth. We consider the Brazilian air transport industry of the 2000s, in which network concentration rapidly increased and was followed by a period of massive flight delays and cancelations, which resulted in the “big blackout” of 2006–2007. We develop an econometric model of network concentration, accounting for demand, cost and competition variables that may affect the propensity of carriers to concentrate flights and passenger connections on a few airports of a network. The main focus of the paper is on the relation between networks leading to the problems of the blackout episode. We investigate the dynamic pattern of the evolution of concentration before and after the abnormal period of operations and find that concentration began to rise at least six quarters before, and persisted at a high level until two quarters after the blackout – and then plunged steeply toward the end of the decade. We believe that our analysis contributes to an improved understanding of the behavior of air transport systems subject to network concentration and congestion. With respect to methodology, we suggest and employ the use of alternative measures of network concentration to check the robustness and validity of our results.     

Challenges to domestic air freight in Australia: Evaluating air traffic markets with gravity modelling

With two of the busiest air traffic corridors globally, Sydney-Melbourne (SYD-MEL) and Sydney-Brisbane (SYD-BNE), very liberal open skies agreements, and the world's most isolated large city in Perth, air freight in Australia should be destined for substantial growth, but has in contrast to other regions such as the US not yet materialised. This paper identifies challenges surrounding domestic air freight markets in Australia and compares the provision of road vs air freight services utilising gravity modelling methods. Our findings suggest the impedance of domestic air freight services in Australia is greater for regional areas between the primary cities (such as Canberra, between Sydney and Melbourne) than remoter areas (such as Cairns in Northern Australia). Our models show further that in addition to distance, air freight capacity on any of our analysed routes is despite being demand-pulled in terms of GDP dependency significantly attuned to factors at both the origin (in particular domestic trade capability, i.e. manufacturing and logistics) and destination.