Cost savings from trajectory deviations in the European air space

Jaume Carreras-Maide, Oriol Lordan and Jose M Sallan

Journal of Air Transport Management, 2020, vol. 88, issue C

Abstract: Air transport deregulation has lead to an increase of air traffic, together with a reduction of air fares. Air fare reduction has narrowed operational margins of airlines, bringing financial and employment instability. This has brought airlines to pay increasing attention to flying costs reduction. Two important components of flying costs airlines can try to cut modifying the planned flight are en route charges and operational costs. We rely on Demand Data Repository (DDR2) data to calculate deviations from planned flight trajectories to analyse the extent to what airlines try to cut operational costs making shorter flights than planned if possible, and cut en route charges providing a planned flight with lower en route charges than the planned flight. Our findings show that there is no generalised strategy among airlines to reduce en-route charges asking for deviations of the planned route. On the other hand, airlines are achieving savings of operational costs regularly. Higher savings per nautical mile are obtained in night flights, with longer planned distance and operated by low cost carriers.

Keywords: Trajectory deviation analysis; Operational costs; En route charges; Air traffic management; Global flying operation costs; Airlines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jaitra:v:88:y:2020:i:c:s0969699720304713

DOI: 10.1016/j.jairtraman.2020.101887

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