There has been a perception that U.S. trunk airlines had an inherent cost advantage over smaller regional airlines because of economies of scale. We have formulated a general model of airline costs, which we estimate by using panel data on large and small airlines. Differences in scale are shown...

The airline industry is the central part of the commercial aviation value and supply chain. Nevertheless, it has the lowest profit margin and return on investment compared to other sectors in the chain. This leads to the question whether the airline industry is sustainable in the long run, the...

Almost 20 years after passage of the US Airline Deregulation Act, air transport regulatory liberalization has made inroads on all continents. But even as deregulation is still spreading, there are also calls for some form of re-regulation. The reasons are diverse and not necessarily consistent....

This paper discusses alternative concepts of productivity and methods of measurement. Different measures are appropriate for different questions. Partial factor productivity measures, such as the ever-popular labour productivity, are appropriate where disaggregate operational performance is of...