Abstract
The European aviation market can be characterised by extreme growth and turbulence ever since the markets were deregulated and low cost carriers emerged on the continent. Initially the biggest toll was paid by main legacy carriers when low costs emerged on trunk routes, which lead to the bankruptcy of Sabena, Swiss airlines and Spanair. However, once big legacy carriers started merging and creating more alliances, sustainability was once again reached. Despite this, as low cost carriers entered the Eastern-European market and looked to stimulate even smaller regional routes, smaller carriers started to suffer. This article is assessing the status quo of the current European regional aviation, highlighting the recent trends and ultimately coming to a conclusion that regional airlines can be sustainable provided that certain key criteria have been met.
Highlights
Europe is one of the biggest aviation markets in the world, second only to North-America (IATA 2015), and has seen rapid growth in passenger numbers over the last 10 years
The fourth part describes the current fragile economic balance of regional aviation and explains the research object. This is followed by a description of the core essence of the research problem which has created the instability in the regional aviation market and how it could be overcome in the fifth part
Whilst Eastern-European airlines have a lower personnel cost, they are still faced with a higher capital cost
Summary
Europe (especially the European Union) is one of the biggest aviation markets in the world, second only to North-America (IATA 2015), and has seen rapid growth in passenger numbers over the last 10 years. The main research object here is the regional airline model and its chance for survival. This is the first study looking at the regional airline business model difficulties, especially from the Eastern-European perspective within the Single Sky framework. The fourth part describes the current fragile economic balance of regional aviation and explains the research object. This is followed by a description of the core essence of the research problem which has created the instability in the regional aviation market and how it could be overcome in the fifth part. There is a conclusion which sums up the research and confirms the conditions which need to be met to make regional aviation sustainable
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