Flight Choice Research Articles

On the flight choice behaviour of business-purpose passengers in the Australian domestic air market

This paper aims to explore the flight choice behaviour of business passengers; in particular, we explored the potential differences between those who work in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and those in non-SMEs. Discrete choice models with attribute non-attendance data were used to model flight choice behaviour. Results showed that fewer flight service attributes were significant on flights between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane due to shorter flight duration but ticket flexibility features were considered significant by business passengers. Self-funded business passengers were more price-sensitive and flight service attributes were considered differently from ticket flexibility attributes by business passengers.

How Safety Risk Information and Alternative Forms of Presenting It Affect Traveler Decision Rules in International Flight Choice

This article develops a “latent elimination” choice model to examine how travelers respond to different levels of safety risk in making decisions about flight choices. We find a pattern of eliminatory and compensatory decision-mix where travelers have varying thresholds of risk acceptance. Below this threshold the options are eliminated, whereas above the threshold the safety attribute can be traded off with other flight attributes. The “safe” versus “unsafe” dichotomy in risk perception is thus a special case where a traveler’s threshold is especially high. Based on a sample of 509 Australians, our stated choice experiment utilized six alternative forms of safety information presentation, and found that they influenced the decision rules adopted by tourists and their willingness to pay. The latent elimination choice model can be used for retrieving elimination behavior in an information-rich online decision context that characterizes many tourism choices, including for understanding how travelers respond to destination safety risk information.

O efeito da variabilidade do tempo de viagem no modal aéreo

A análise da variabilidade do tempo de viagem está ganhando interesse entre os pes­quisadores e planejadores. Este trabalho avalia o comportamento dos usuários do transporte aéreo diante da presença da variabilidade de tempo de viagem. Especifica­mente, determina o comportamento dos usuários do transporte aéreo em relação a esta variabilidade, propensos, neutros ou avessos; identifica e caracteriza esta variabi­lidade na escolha do voo e compara o impacto das diferentes características envolvi­das. Dados de preferência declarada foram coletados e modelos de escolha discreta estimados para modelar o comportamento dos usuários. Os resultados obtidos mos­traram que os usuários do transporte aéreo são avessos à variabilidade do tempo de viagem. A comparação entre os impactos das variáveis mostrou que valorizam princi­palmente o custo da passagem na escolha do voo, seguido da existência de uma escala no deslocamento entre origem e destino, e por último o tempo e variabilidade do tempo de viagem.

Willingness to pay for safety improvements in passenger air travel

The risk of being involved in an airplane accident is largely ignored in air passengers’ choice models. The reason presumably is that it is hard to operationalize, because objective safety indicators often involve extremely low probabilities that are hard to grasp and interpret by passengers. In this paper, we propose an operationalization that is based on the perception of safety, which is easy to understand and resonates that perceptions often influence decisions stronger than objective variables. We conceptualize that passengers form a safety perception score of a particular flight based on their perception of airline and route attributes and that this score in turn is traded-off against other flight attributes, such as ticket costs, to arrive at a flight choice. In line with this conceptualization, two stated preference experiments are conducted. In a first experiment, combinations of airline and route attributes are evaluated in terms of safety that is captured on a rating scale. In a second experiment, safety perception is treated as an attribute and traded-off against other flight attributes to arrive at a flight choice. The paper presents the results of a regression and a Panel Mixed Logit model estimated from responses obtained from a convenience sample of 161 air passengers recruited in the Netherlands. The results of both models are then combined to calculate the willingness to pay values for improvements made to a range of airline and route attributes, taking into account socio-demographic variables and psychological traits. As expected, the results indicate that the willingness to pay for improving safety decreases with higher initial safety levels.

Rank-order concordance among conflicting emissions estimates for informing flight choice

Air transport Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions estimates differ greatly, depending on the calculation method employed. Among the IPCC, ICAO, DEFRA, and BrighterPlanet calculation methods, the largest estimate may be up to 4.5 times larger than the smallest. Such heterogeneity – and ambiguity over the true estimate – confuses the consumer, undermining the credibility of emissions estimates in general. Consequently, GHG emissions estimates do not currently appear on the front page of flight search-engine results. Even where there are differences between alternative flights’ emissions, this information is unavailable to consumers at the point of choice. When external considerations rule out alternative travel-modes, the relative ranking of flight options’ GHG emissions is sufficient to inform consumers’ decision making. Whereas widespread agreement on a gold standard remains elusive, the present study shows that the principal GHG emissions calculation methods produce consistent rankings within specific route-structure classes. Hence, for many consumers, the flight identified as most GHG efficient is not sensitive to the specific calculation method employed. But unless GHG emissions information is displayed at the point of decision, it cannot enter into consumers’ decision making. A credible and ambiguity-free alternative would thus be to display GHG ranking information on the front page of flight search-engine results.

How important is safety in making flight choices? Evidence from simple choice experiments

This paper examines the extent to which safety risk information influences flight choice. Simple stated choice experiments were implemented with four independent samples of college students, young non-college students and older employed people across a 20 months period. Strong consistency in the flight choice behaviour across the samples was observed. In particular, there is evidence that even if potential travellers do not nominate “safety” as a criterion in airline choice, when presented with safety information in a stated choice scenario, the respondents use that information to make decisions. However, there is also a significant variation in the extent to which the respondents are sensitive to the safety information, which was represented in the form of aircraft incidents similar to the way aviation statistics are used by the media. Understanding the reasons for the wide variability could help improve public acceptability and tolerance towards risk control measures in aviation.

Revealed Preference Analysis of Characteristics in Discrete Choice

This paper begins to bridge the gap between applied discrete choice analysis and theoretical models of stochastic choice. In applications, observable characteristics of choice objects are ubiquitous. In contrast, most theoretical work is silent about characteristics. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a dataset to be consistent with a model of stochastic choice that includes characteristics. This model yields linear restrictions to test various functional forms of utility over characteristics. We use these conditions to test different model specifications using individual stated preference data on flight choice from Louviere et al. (2013). We find that linear utility over characteristics often performs best. There is also evidence of limited cognition as the number of alternatives to choose increases.

A study on passengers' airport choice behavior using hybrid choice model: A case study of Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea

Improving explanatory power is significantly important to understand variables that affect attitudes and perceptions in the decision process. This paper estimates not only tangible attributes but also intangible perceptions and attitudes using a hybrid-choice model to study air passengers' flight choice behavior. The empirical study was conducted for the choice behavior of air passengers at Seoul Metropolitan Area, South Korea. The analysis uses a two-level Nested Logit model in order to examine which factors have more effect on passengers’ choice of airport and airline simultaneously by using airport and airline choice attributes. The study also estimated the parameters in the equations relating the latent variable by using Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results indicate that the models with latent variables have improved Goodness-of-Fit when compared to classical discrete choice models and effectively capture psychological factors that affect choice behavior of passengers.

Does it pay to reveal safety information? The effect of safety information on flight choice

The case of flights safety lends itself as a natural case study for choice under of information asymmetry that involves dread risk and emotional factors. Specifically it allows one to experiment how the releasing of information will affect consumer choice. Previous studies, which followed the deregulation of commercial aviation, raised concerns about the corresponding potential for a marked deterioration in airline safety. Measures to prevent that decline were subsequently proposed. Specifically, it was argued that the public sector should establish and release flight safety indicators in addition to accidents’ statistics, which are currently available. It was argued that such safety indicators will also enable airlines to diversify their safety offerings. Underlying this argument are the assumptions that consumers’ flight safety preferences vary and that, provided with safety information, consumers will use it when making decisions. The present work, however, refutes the first assumption and sheds light on the second. It further investigates whether and how consumers react to and interpret safety information when choosing a flight, while accounting explicitly for a psychological trait. Employing an advanced experimental design and econometric approach, we find that: 1. When formal flight safety ratings are supplied, individuals abandoned their priors and rely on the information provided. 2. When it comes to “bad death” probabilities, people are not sensitive to the different shades of safety, and instead, they simply discern flights as either safe or unsafe. 3. Under a certain conditions disclosed information can alleviated fear and change the decision making of airline passengers.

Measuring the effect of aviation safety risk reduction on flight choice in young travellers

More information about safety is becoming more generally available to travellers, but the extent to which passengers use safety information to make decisions about which airlines to take is relatively unknown. This study attempts to examine the extent to which safety information plays a role in travellers’ flight choices. Using the stated choice methodology, we modelled how the choice of a flight option is related to factors, including price, schedule, safety, travel time and airline inflight service quality. The study found that, in the context of a young adult college student population, price and safety information emerge as the most important factors influencing airline choices. Interestingly, the study found that most of the potential travellers surveyed, when asked about the factors they consider when making flight choices, do not nominate safety. However, when specific safety-risk information is introduced in the stated choice conditions, respondents considered this factor in making their choices between flight alternatives. This paper contributes towards a more complete understanding of how passengers use safety information and notes how this can be analytically translated into commercial implications for the aviation industry.

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.

Choice modelling with search and sort data from an interactive choice experiment

We present a highly structured, online, interactive choice environment containing a large number of alternatives, a search tool that eliminates alternatives that fail specified criteria, and a sort tool. A conceptual framework is developed that links tool usage and preference heterogeneity, and tested in the context of long-haul flight choice. Individuals who sort on price are more price sensitive; individuals who search on certain attributes have a greater marginal (dis)utility for that attribute; and individuals who perform certain non-price searches have a lesser price disutility. The method shows promise as a means for providing a richer picture of preference heterogeneity.

Effect of Road Traffic Congestion on Aviation Passenger's Flight Choice

This paper investigates how passengers choose flight times in view of ground traffic congestion. The departure time choice model of aviation passengers is developed by extending Vickrey's bottleneck model. The conditions are determined for the existence of the user equilibrium in the model. Then, the range of the difference between the airfares is established while the number of aviation passengers choosing the same flight time remains unchanged at the user equilibrium. Moreover, the tendency of the total queuing time and the incremental airfare revenue is derived along with the difference between the airfares. The results show that the number of aviation passengers is jointly determined by the flight time and the bottleneck capacity for different schedules. Under the given passenger volume, the total queuing time (traffic congestion) can be reduced or the incremental airfare revenue can be increased by properly adjusting the airfares difference. Two numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the principle and its application.

The Impact of Fear of Flying on Travelers’ Flight Choice

Flying is an important part of the tourist experience and a substantial component of its cost. While travelers’ decision making regarding air travel has been studied, the role of fear of flying (FOF), a very common phenomenon among air passengers, in the process has not been explicitly addressed. Since airline safety levels are difficult to assess, passengers who have FOF employ other attributes of the itinerary as a means of alleviating their fear. Based on a stated preference experiment and accounting specifically for FOF as a latent variable, we established that the individuals’ level of FOF affects the value they place on attributes of flight itineraries. We show that home carriers, scheduled carriers, and nonstop flights are fear-alleviating attributes. We also show that the price elasticities of demand for flights are smaller in absolute terms among people with a high level of FOF compared to their counterparts with low FOF.

Resource-tracking by bumble bees: What explains local responses to density of bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) flowers?

Habitat selection theory predicts that consumers should distribute themselves across alternative resources in a fitness-maximizing manner. One such distribution is the ideal free distribution, where consumer density matches local resource density. Alternatively, if wing wear is an important cost of wing use for bees, there should be relatively more bee consumers in high density patches, resulting in “overmatching”. If the energetic costs of flight influence patch choice, there also should be relatively more consumers in high density patches (where flight costs are lower), resulting in “overmatching”. To examine these hypotheses, I observed the visitation of bumble bees (genus Bombus) across experimental manipulations of plant density in patches of bergamot(Monarda fistulosa) in southwest Alberta, Canada over 2 summers. Bees flew more often and for a greater proportion of time, and hit their wings more frequently, in low-density patches. In 2004, bees “undermatched” resources (relatively few bees in high density patches). In 2005, bees achieved an ideal free distribution. Overall, wing wear and energy costs alone cannot explain bumble bee use of their floral resources (in either year), while the ideal free distribution sometimes can(i.e., in 2005). This study therefore complements the findings of ideal free distributions in other aspects of the foraging ecology of pollinators.

Modeling Demographic and Unobserved Heterogeneity in Air Passengers' Sensitivity to Service Attributes in Itinerary Choice

Modeling passengers' flight choice behavior is valuable to understanding the increasingly competitive airline market and predicting air travel demand. Standard and mixed-multinomial logit models of itinerary choice for business travel are estimated on the basis of a stated preference survey conducted in 2001. The results suggest that observed demographic- and trip-related differences are incorrectly manifested as unobserved heterogeneity in a random-coefficient mixed logit model that ignores the demographic- and trip-related characteristics of travelers. Among demographics, gender and income level have the most noticeable effects on sensitivity to service attributes in itinerary choice behavior, but membership in a frequent flyer program, employment status, travel frequency, and group travel also emerge as important determinants. However, residual heterogeneity is significant because of unobserved factors, even after accommodating sensitivity variations due to demographic- and trip-related factors. Conseq...

Determining flight frequencies on an airline network with demand–supply interactions

Abstract This paper determines flight frequencies on an airline network with demand–supply interactions between passenger demand and flight frequencies. The model consists of two submodels, a passenger airline flight choice model and an airline flight frequency programming model. The demand–supply interactions relevant to determining flight frequency on an airline’s network are analyzed by integrating these two submodels. The necessary condition for the convergence of the demand–supply interaction is discussed. An example demonstrates the feasibility of applying the proposed models. The results are more accurate than those obtained without considering demand–supply interactions, and the models provide ways to consider demand–supply interactions well in advance to determine flight frequencies on an airline network.

Carrier Choices of Air Passengers in Pacific Rim: Using Comparative Analysis and Complementary Interpretation of Revealed Preference and Stated Preference Data

The flight choice behavior of Korean people for long-distance international air trips that take more than 10 hr air journey time was studied. Separate logit choice models were calibrated with revealed preference (RP) data and stated preference (SP) data, and the comparative analysis and the complementary interpretation of RP and SP data were tried. Required data were collected by the survey at Kimpo International Airport in Seoul, Korea, in 1993 and 1994. Journey time, air fare, service frequency, and nationality of airline were identified as major factors influencing flight choice in the market. It is remarkable that Korean airlines were considerably preferred in the market. Most Koreans are not fluent in English or other European languages and are not accustomed to western culture. This results in their preference for Korean airlines. Value of travel time and other trade-off ratios among variables to evaluate the relative importance of each factor were also identified through the results of RP and SP data analysis.

Carrier Choices of Air Passengers in Pacific Rim: Using Comparative Analysis and Complementary Interpretation of Revealed Preference and Stated Preference Data

The flight choice behavior of Korean people for long-distance international air trips that take more than 10 hr air journey time was studied. Separate logit choice models were calibrated with revealed preference (RP) data and stated preference (SP) data, and the comparative analysis and the complementary interpretation of RP and SP data were tried. Required data were collected by the survey at Kimpo International Airport in Seoul, Korea, in 1993 and 1994. Journey time, air fare, service frequency, and nationality of airline were identified as major factors influencing flight choice in the market. It is remarkable that Korean airlines were considerably preferred in the market. Most Koreans are not fluent in English or other European languages and are not accustomed to western culture. This results in their preference for Korean airlines. Value of travel time and other trade-off ratios among variables to evaluate the relative importance of each factor were also identified through the results of RP and SP data analysis.