Air Transport Industry Research Articles

Ecosystem dynamics of air transport business development in the digital age

Aim. The presented study aims to analyze the dynamics of air transport business development in the era of digital transformation from the perspective of the implementation of the ecosystem paradigm as a relevant modern business model organization concept.Tasks. The authors investigate approaches to defining the concept of “ecosystem” in the field of economic relations; reveal the essence of approaches to defining the structure of the economic ecosystem; describe key trends in the development of air transport within the paradigm of the ecosystem concept.Methods. This study uses general scientific methods of cognition in various aspects to analyze scientific approaches to defining the concept of “ecosystem” in the field of economic relations and defining the structure of the economic ecosystem, and to identify trends in the development of air transport within the paradigm of the ecosystem concept.Results. The introduction of the ecosystem concept into business processes leads to changes in the attitude to the concept of “competition”. The theory of rivalry is replaced by the practice of convergence — the alignment and unification of different technologies into new types of technologies. Technological convergence changes the nature of familiar things. The authors identify and analyze three essential characteristics of the concept of “ecosystem”, the joint implementation of which makes it possible to entertain the possibility of implementing the ecosystem concept of business development in practice. The digital basis of ecosystem organization ensures its modular structure, which, in turn, determines the ease and flexibility of both connecting participants to the system and exiting it. By forming new consumer preferences, the ecosystem allows participants to work with consumers successfully. In the context of the assessed advantages of the ecosystem, the authors identify and investigate its 13 disadvantages. Seven key development trends are identified from the perspective of assessing the prospects for the ecosystemization of professional activity in the passenger air transport market.Conclusions. The tourism market is the most popular sector for ecosystem development in the air transport industry at the current stage of market development. Tourism ecosystems are a definite trend of inter-product cooperation, including those using the services of airlines, airports, and aggregator sites. The authors believe that the issues of theoretical understanding and practical analysis of the ecosystem dynamics of air transport business development in the digital age remain not fully investigated and need to be studied in detail. In further studies, the authors will analyze the organizational and legal nature of ecosystems, the essential characteristics of the structural elements of the ecosystem, the types of ecosystems in air transport, and the practice of their implementation.

A policy on the externality problem and solution suggestions in air transportation: The environment and sustainability

The main purpose of this study is to highlight the sustainable development problem faced by the air transport industry, to offer solutions by identifying positive/negative, production/consumption and similar externalities, thereby determining effective policy responses. The critical impacts of aviation environmental issues for policymakers and the management of the air transport industry are discussed within the concept of externality. In this respect, the study offers the view that the vital, economic and social benefits of the air transport industry should not be lost and should be distributed much more broadly and fairly. However, the environmental impacts of air transport should still be urgently and effectively internalized. This research includes addressing the main issues related to the environmental impacts of air transportation from a general perspective and considering the effects of air transportation within the framework of the concept of externality. In this aspect, the study presents for the first time how the aviation environmental impact and the financial value of results should be handled in directives and regulations. The environmental problems of air transport are presented clearly and comprehensively, and solutions are shared to internalize externalities.

A Kind of Weakening Buffer Operators with Time-Varying Parameters and Their Applications

Buffer operators can effectively weaken the impact disturbance of the system and restore the original appearance of the system. However, the buffer strength of the existing buffer operator is fixed, and the buffer strength cannot be adjusted. So the buffer effect for the system impact disturbance is not flexible enough, and the accuracy of the prediction model established is not high. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes weakened buffer operators with time-varying parameters, analyzes the properties of the newly constructed buffer operator, and proves the superiority of the new buffer operators theoretically. Finally, the new buffer operators proposed in this paper are applied to the prediction of the number of employees in China’s air transport industry and the unsafe events in China’s civil aviation. The results show that the proposed buffer operators are better than the existing buffer operators, which further verify the validity and practicability of the proposed buffer operators.

Lifting the mask mandate puts our priorities in plain sight.

Lifting the mask mandate puts our priorities in plain sight.

A Review of Ancillary Services Implementation in the Revenue Management Systems

Ancillary services in air transport represent a set of services provided to passengers to choose from, enabling them to enhance their travel experience while accumu-lating additional airline revenue. Low-cost airlines pi-oneered the practice, but the separation of ancillary services from the basic service has become an intense-ly growing trend in the air transport industry over the last decade. This practice has enabled low-cost airlines to significantly reduce the price of the basic service. To remain competitive in an era of transparency provided by search engines, traditional airlines offer ancillary ser-vices in addition to the basic service. To meet the passen-ger’s needs, a whole range of ancillary services has been created. However, existing revenue management systems do not take this ancillary revenue into account when cal-culating reservation limits. If the airline knew that an in-dividual passenger is willing to pay more for ancillary services, the system would be able to adjust the availabil-ity of the service for that passenger during the booking process. A review of research on passengers’ willingness to pay for ancillary services is presented in the paper, as well as a review on research on the personalisation of ancillary services and challenges of integrating person-alised pricing into existing revenue management systems.

The Air Transportation Industry: Economic Conflict and Competition

The Air Transportation Industry: Economic Conflict and Competition

Effects of Low-Cost Airlines on Domestic Tourism Economy in Thailand

Air deregulation in 2003 led to the development of the low-cost airline industry in Thailand. The new airlines entered the air transport industry market and helped to further increase tourism destinations across the country, motivating more internal travel. This study aims to examine the impact of low-cost airlines factors on tourism demand and to identify the relationship between low-cost airlines and domestic tourism in Thailand. ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) model was applied to analyse the long-run and short-run relationship between the dependent variables and domestic tourism demand. The findings show that the chosen economic variables in this study are showing importance in determining the number of domestic tourists particularly in the long-run but a less significant relationship in the short run. The increasing connectivity between the cities, especially between the rural and metropolitan areas is stimulating travel and trade.

Efficiency in Thailand’s air transport industry in the era of air liberalisation policies

Air liberalisation and open skies policies have benefited countries by generating economic growth. However, as the sky has become overcrowded, the increasing competition has pressured airlines to control costs in order to maintain profitability. Efficient use of resources is an important topic for the airlines. Thailand’s air transport industry is unique compared with that in its neighbouring countries. The number of low cost airlines operating in the country has made Thailand a major aviation hub in the region. The developments and changes in Thailand’s air transport industry have raised questions as to whether these have brought any significant changes to airline productivity and efficiency. This study adopted the data envelopment analysis model to examine the efficiency of five airlines in Thailand for the nine years from 2011 to 2019. The airlines, of various fleet sizes, pattern of ownership and business models were examined. The study investigated both the technical and scale efficiency of the airlines and concluded that budget airlines are not necessarily more efficient than full service carriers, private airlines are more efficient than state-owned airlines, and small to medium size airlines are more efficient than large airlines.

Criteria of quality assessment of regional airport services - A very last picture before the COVID-19 pandemic

Omnipresent globalisation causes integration of societies, economies and cultures, and air transport significantly facilitates it. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, air transport was one of the most dynamically developing types of transportation. The quality of airport services was measured, as it supports the development of air transport and airports in particular. As today the future of the air transport industry is not clear, it is essential to have the last picture of service quality assessment criteria before the airports' lockdown to sustain their development after reassumption. The study covered the operation of a regional international airport in Europe before the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A diagnostic survey was used in the study, and the data were collected through a questionnaire of 40 questions. The study covered 263 passengers who had used the services of the examined airport at least once before the lockdown. The collected data were statistically analysed. The main findings are that the passengers consider components of the quality of airport services in groups and not individually. In some groups of factors, the level of satisfaction varies depending on the frequency of airport use. The results are in accordance with the findings of other authors researching different airports. They should be considered when managing the airport and identifying the causes of low-quality services to improve them and eliminate or at least reduce passenger dissatisfaction, especially in the face of resumption of airport operations after the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID 19 RAMIFICATIONS ON TOURISTIC RESULTS IN 2020

The number of COVID 19 infections worldwide by the end of September 2020 rose to more than 34 million cases. At the same time number of fatalities caused by the same virus exceeds one million. In the year 2020 about ten per cent drop of economic growth was experienced compared to the previous year due to COVID 19 crisis and with probably the biggest impact on tourism industry. The results of global tourist international arrivals in April, May and June 2020 with drop of 95-98 per cent are self-explanatory. Thus, stabile and continuing growth from the beginning of 21st century has been suddenly brutally interrupted returning the tourism industry on level of at least 30-40 years back, maybe even more. The consequences of COVID 19 on touristic results have been analysed in the paper. The analysis is based on four different geographical areas – global, European, Southeast European and Croatian, based on the last 20 years of tourism results. Since similar dramatic situation has also affected air transport industry, the correlation between the tourism and air carriers’ results in the last two decades is also considered in this paper. Different scenarios of the future recovery of tourism industry are considered in the paper.

Aviation Hub and Expo Development Design Plan

The Aviation Hub and Expo, in addition to the School of Aircraft Engineering, is a timetable that can preview the history of aircraft to date, and develop or plan air navigation technologies or foundations, and develop the air transport industry to ensure its safety, security, and growth. This study collects different types of information and studies about Aviation Expo around the world and in Saudi Arabia. In specific, this study investigates case studies and analysis, identifies project components for zoning, provides space program as well as determines the appropriate project location based on the site evaluation criteria. This project is under the category of education and entertainment building. The proposed zoning plan includes the main lobby, administrative areas, education areas, museum and gallery areas, Skydome cinema and service areas. Based on the site assessment, the proposed location for the project is in the Obhur Al-Shamaliyah area of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Aviation museums vary in size from housing just one or two aircraft to hundreds. They may be owned by national, regional or local governments or be privately owned. A lot of aviation galleries focus on military or civil flight, or on aircraft history of a particular period, for example, pioneers flight or the succeeding golden age among the World War I and II, or a specific sort of aircraft.

Neutrality and Equality Aspects in the EU State Aid Temporary Framework 2020: The Case of the Airline Industry

Abstract Following the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the restrictions imposed by the Member States (MSs) of the European Union (EU) led the tourism and commercial air transport industry to face serious financial difficulties that required airlines to apply for state support. In March 2020, the European Commission adopted a State Aid Temporary Framework (TF) for the COVID-19 period to simplify the process of granting aid, allowing the MSs rapid economic interventions. Claims regarding the approval of State aid to certain airlines reached the EU General Court (EGC), on the grounds of violation of the fair competition principle. It became clear that the processes enabled by the TF dispensed unequal treatment to airline companies and that the flexibility of the TF created competition imbalances. In spite of these events, little attention has been given to the way its application ignores the requirements of EU State aid control and other procedural justice and fairness principles, by failing to ensure neutrality and equality. This article addresses the matter using a standard legal interpretive approach to explain the imbalances created by the regulation. It presents a systematic review of the current regime, identifies the TF inefficiencies affecting competition principles, and argues for specific adjustments that could enhance its transparency. These contributions are useful to improve the existing framework and help prepare for a better management of future crises.

Assortment of Airports’ Sustainability Strategy: A Comprehensiveness Analysis Framework

Global sustainability challenges are transforming 21st century business. Economic, social, and environmental sustainability impacts regulatory agencies and enterprises, particularly in the air transport industry, which facilitates access to productive services and market linkage. Stakeholders, shareholders, consumers, employees, and society are increasingly pressuring businesses to examine their socioeconomic consequences and manage them sustainably and resiliently. In this competitive and economically sensitive climate, good management is a primary responsibility for airport operators and authorities, as well as national and local economies. An assessment tool for airport strategic plans is developed in this research. Corporate activities can encourage responsible infrastructure development and company sustainability. The assessment methodology is based on a comparative analysis between airports and regulatory authorities’ threshold. The role of sustainability in the air transport business ecosystem is depicted using a systemic approach, demonstrating that its relationship to business performance is a significant barrier to business resilience and competition for planners, managers, and decision makers. The numerical application considers a group of European, U.S, and Asian airports serving international flights. Conventional wisdom is to provide the evaluation analysis framework for planning and managing capital-intensive transport hubs such as airports.

Remediating sub-Saharan Airline challenges and limitations

Background: Air transport connectivity to and within Africa is provided by both African and non-African airlines. These carriers are confronted by both intrinsic and extrinsic challenges, which constrain their ability to provide the level of air transport connectivity demanded to fully enable economic growth for the continent. In addition, since April 2020, the reduction in air connectivity resulting from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has further constrained the capacity of the air transport industry to meet the passenger and freight demand.Objective: The primary objective of this study was to identify the challenges faced by the airline industry in sub-Saharan Africa in meeting the air transport demands of expected economic growth, and to rank the identified challenges in terms of their urgency and importance.Method: Initial data were collected from three sources: (1) a review of the literature, (2) industry reports, and (3) as a further but secondary resource, the key inputs into air connectivity model metrics were used to identify additional possible key result areas.From these data, the study derived open-ended questions as prompts for face-to-face (not virtual) interviews with chief executives of the airline industry. This enabled triangulation of the initial data for verification, and then prioritisation for its application in a possible subsequent project-based remediation strategy.Results: This study revealed that lack of route liberalisation, management weaknesses, state protection, lack of competition, connectivity challenges and the need for airline partnerships were the most important challenges faced by the industry. In this study, the identified challenges were ranked by thematic analysis.Conclusion: The key products of this study include the identification and ranking of the challenges impacting the sub-Saharan African air transport industry.

A Review of Financial Performance of Aircraft Leasing Companies

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused many industries, especially the air transport industry, to experience a crisis. It is important to analyze the change in the financial performance of global aircraft leasing companies, one of the most important stakeholders of the airline industry during this crisis period. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the financial performance of global aircraft leasing companies in the period from Q1 2018 to Q4 2020. In the study, we analyzed the financial data of 6 global aircraft leasing companies using the CRITIC-based CODAS method. Our findings indicate that some aircraft leasing companies have been ahead of the competition due to the Covid-19 pandemic, while others have fallen behind in the financial performance rankings. Therefore, our results prove that aircraft leasing companies are affected by the covid-19 pandemic. Our analysis on a sectoral basis indicates the relationship between the debt repayment capacity of airlines and the performance of leasing companies.

Investigating the Shallenges and Strategies for the Development of the Air Transport Industry

با توجه به اهمیت و اثرگذاری حمل و نقل در توسعه منطقه‌ای و محلی در کشورها، این مقاله به بررسی چالش‌ها و راهکارهای توسعه صنعت حمل ‌و نقل هوایی بعنوان یکی از زیربخش‌های صنعت حمل نقل پرداخته شده است. با توجه به نتایج پژوهش‌های صورت گرفته می‌توان نتیجه گرفت که ارزش افزوده صنعت حمل و نقل هوایی و سطح دستمزد و قیمت سرمایه بعنوان قیمت عوامل‌تولید در این بخش از مهمترین عوامل در افزایش تولید، اشتغال و جذب نیروی‌کار در این بخش در ایران می باشند. به نظر می‌رسد این امر به این دلیل است که در چند سال گذشته به دلایل مختلفی از جمله تحریم‌های بین‌المللی، تأمین منابع ارزی و فرسودگی ناوگان و تجهیزات در صنعت هوانوردی، اثر منفی همه‌گیری کرونا بر اقتصاد حمل و نقل، سرمایه-گذاری بالایی در بخش حمل‌و‌نقل هوایی ایران صورت نگرفته است، و با توجه به عدم وجود ظرفیت کافی در این بخش، در بسیاری از مواقع کمبود نیز قابل مشاهده است. به همین خاطر افزایش ارزش‌افزوده در این صنعت منجر به افزایش تقاضا برای جذب نیروی‌کار گردیده و اشتغال را افزایش می‌دهد. از طرف دیگـر چـون اغلب افراد شاغل در این بخش از افراد متخصص و تحصیلکرده تشکیل یافته‌اند، ارزش‌افزوده‌ای که این افراد ایجـاد می‌کنند در مقایسه با سایر زیربخش‌های حمل‌و‌نقل بسیار بیشتر می‌باشد. بنابراین حمل و نقل هوایی ضـمن اینکه یکـی از مهمترین زیربخش‌های خدمات برای توسعه اقتصادی منطقه‌ای و محلی می‌باشد، دارای این ظرفیت است که با سرمایه‌گذاری در این بخش، افزایش قابل توجهی در متغیرهای کلان اقتصادی در کشور ازجمله اشتغال به وجود آورد.

Tourism Entrepreneurial Development and Flight Frequency at a Destination: Case Study of Chennai Airport, Tamilnadu

This paper evaluates the job of flight recurrence on the travel industry enterprising advancement in Chennai air terminal, Tamilnadu. The air transport industry in other Asian nations is becoming more grounded and advances the travel industry pioneering improvement. Nations, for example, China, Singapore, Malaysis and Japan have created solid air transport organize which is essential in the travel industry advancement. Then again, numerous Asian nations, India comprehensive are attempting to grow such air transport organize which straightforwardly influences the travel industry innovative advancement. Organizations, for example, travel offices, visit administrators, ground handlers, and air terminals are very relying upon carrier’s activity to endure. While trying to break down the situation in the travel industry between carrier’s recurrence and the travel industry pioneering improvement there was a proportion of connection between the two consequently the work of quantitative methodology notwithstanding top to bottom meetings directed with aircraft, travel, and visit tasks chiefs to analyze the outcomes. The examination uncovered that carriers have a crucial job in the travel industry pioneering advancement and that without aircrafts working, numerous organizations would not have existed and should all aircrafts quit working in the nation, numerous organizations would stick to this same pattern. The examination likewise found out that high recurrence of flights at a goal implies more chances and income for the travel industry business people.

A qualitative study on human resources communication in the air transport industry

A qualitative study on human resources communication in the air transport industry

INFLIGHT SERVICE WASTE MANAGEMENT DURING THE COVID-19 IN INDONESIA

Various business sectors, including the aviation industry, faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, there was a decline of 60-80% in passenger load factor. Adaptation is required to reduce the cost of inflight service and the waste produced. The study was conducted through field observation and interview. At the time of the study, no other research on the specific topic of the impact of COVID-19 on managing inflight service wastes could be found. The study highlights the measures taken by airlines and airport operators to comply with the regulations, and more importantly to reassure the public that it was safe to travel by air and that the waste produced by the air transport industry does not aggravate the pandemic. The results of this study indicated that airlines and airport operators had made preventive efforts in reducing inflight service waste, improving aircraft cleanliness to protect passenger health. The initiatives were aimed at preventing the transmission of COVID-19. The measures taken included changing the packaging of food and beverages, using the prepacked meal method and adopting more hygienic method in processing raw materials. Initiatives included providing workers with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) when handling inflight service wastes.

Mask-wearing intentions on airplanes during COVID-19 – Application of theory of planned behavior model

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the air transport industry, forcing airlines to take measures to ensure the safety of passengers and crewmembers. Among the many protective measures, mask mandate onboard the airplane is an important one, but travelers' mask-wearing intentions during flight remain uninvestigated especially in the US where mask use is a topic of on-going debate. This study focused on the mask use of airline passengers when they fly during COVID-19, using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model to examine the relationship between nine predicting factors and the mask-wearing intention in the aircraft cabin. A survey instrument was developed to collect data from 1124 air travelers on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and the data was statistically analyzed using structural equation modeling and logistic regression. Results showed that attitude, descriptive norms, risk avoidance, and information seeking significantly influenced the travelers' intention to wear a mask during flight in COVID-19. Group analysis further indicated that the four factors influenced mask-wearing intentions differently on young, middle-aged, and senior travelers. It was also found that demographic and travel characteristics including age, education, income, and travel frequency can be used to predict if the airline passenger was willing to pay a large amount to switch to airlines that adopted different mask policies during COVID-19. The findings of this study fill the research gap of air travelers’ intentions to wear a mask when flying during a global pandemic and provide recommendations for mask-wearing policies to help the air transport industry recover from COVID-19.