Abstract
Airline managers must prepare effective strategies to cope with fluctuations and enhance the performance and competitiveness of their companies. Airline performance evaluation also requires a multidimensional perspective that focuses on both financial and nonfinancial indicators. In this study; a two-stage super-efficiency data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to better understand the sources of inefficiency, and an enhanced performance evaluation from five different dimensions was conducted by integrating the sustainability balanced scorecard and two-stage DEA approaches. The results indicated that Aeromexico and Icelandair had the highest efficiency scores among the 35 airlines, and they were labeled as efficient with respect to the customer, finance, internal process, learning and growth, and environmental dimensions of the SBSC. Finally; a regression analysis based on the Simar–Wilson method shows that an increase in the number of wide-body aircraft and return on assets negatively affects efficiency, net carrier airlines are more efficient than low-cost airlines, and airlines that are not members of any alliance are more efficient.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 102348 |
Journal | Journal of Air Transport Management |
Volume | 107 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
Funding
Kottas and Madas (2018) evaluated and compared the efficiency between allied and non-allied airline groups during 2012–2016 using an integrated framework based on a super-efficient DEA and an intertemporal approach. Their basic findings indicate that alliance group membership does not result in superior airline efficiency. They also revealed that airlines with higher freight revenue shares have higher efficiency, and Asian and European air carriers have higher efficiency than American air carriers. A super-efficiency DEA methodology is used to rank efficient airlines and detect potential outliers. Lin and Hong (2020) underlined that the efficiency analysis of airlines shows a different perspective when passenger-kilometers and ton-kilometers are awarded; they will be wasted if they are not consumed. Therefore, they proposed using a relational network DEA model to evaluate the efficiency of airlines from the cost and service perspectives. They evaluated eight airlines in Taiwan and China and found that the service efficiency of most companies was better than their cost efficiency. In addition, the cost efficiency of Chinese companies was better than that of Taiwanese companies. However, they included four Chinese airlines because of missing data of Chinese airlines, and this may have provided a misleading conclusion related to Chinese airlines.
Keywords
- Airline efficiency
- Simar–Wilson analysis
- Sustainability balanced scorecard
- Two-stage DEA