Abstract
The rapid development of the aviation industry has brought about the deterioration of the climate, which makes airline efficiency become a hot issue of social concern. As an important nonparametric method, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), has been widely applied in efficiency evaluation. This paper examines 130 papers published in the period of 1993–2020 to summarize the literature involving the special application of DEA models in airline efficiency. The paper begins with an overall review of the existing literature, and then the radial DEA, nonradial DEA, network DEA, dynamic DEA, and DEA models with undesirable outputs applied in airline efficiency are introduced. The main advantages and disadvantages of the above models are summarized, and the drivers of airline efficiency are analyzed. Finally, the literature review ends up with future research directions and conclusions.
Highlights
In the past half-century, the airline industry has undergone a lot of changes
As the studies on airlines are enriched and deepen, it is necessary to make a review and summary of relevant researches. erefore, this paper aims at sorting out the literature of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) applications in the airline industry, analyzing the research status, and pointing out the possible future research directions
There are mainly the following models: (1) bootstrap DEA models [47,48,49], (2) DEA models dealing with randomness [13, 50, 51], (3) DEA models with network structures [52,53,54,55,56,57], (4) dynamic DEA models in consecutive periods [58,59,60,61], (5) cross-efficiency DEA models [62]; (6) DEA models distinguishing effective Decision-Making Units (DMUs) [61,62,63], (7) DEA models that deal with undesirable outputs [58], and (8) DEA models dealing with a special type of data existed in inputs and outputs [64]
Summary
In the past half-century, the airline industry has undergone a lot of changes. On the one hand, from the deregulation and liberalization of the airline industry in the US and Europe to the adoption of “Open Sky” policies in Asia and Latin America, market global competition has greatly stimulated the development of air transportation. Plenty of scholars have paid much effort in evaluating airline efficiency and have achieved rich results Among these researches, parametric methods and nonparametric methods are usually applied. With the continuous enrichment of the research results of DEA methods in various fields such as finance, transportation, environment, and education, it is quite necessary to summarize the relevant research results from specific fields. Few surveys are available to review systematically the status of studies and to discuss the future research direction of DEA application in the airline industry. Erefore, this paper aims at sorting out the literature of DEA applications in the airline industry, analyzing the research status, and pointing out the possible future research directions.
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