The big three EU Low Cost Carriers before and during the Covid-19 pandemic: Network overlaps and airfare effects

Hanxiang Zhang, Achim I. Czerny, Wolfgang Grimme and Hans-Martin Niemeier

Research in Transportation Economics, 2023, vol. 97, issue C

Abstract: This study uses a large dataset to consider the network change of the three largest European Low Cost Carriers (LCCs) easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air during the pre-Covid-19 period and the Covid-19 pandemic period. Network changes are characterized in terms of airport pairs, city pairs, numbers of flights and network overlaps. The results show that European LCCs increasingly expanded their networks into markets that had already been served by incumbent LCCs, which indicates that LCCs increasingly compete head-to-head among themselves. Difference-in-differences regressions estimate that network overlaps among these LCCs lead to airfare reductions of approximately six Euros, ten percent.

Keywords: Covid-19; Europe; Low Cost Carriers; network overlaps; airfares (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L93 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0739885922000567
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:retrec:v:97:y:2023:i:c:s0739885922000567

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_2&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.retrec.2022.101235

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Transportation Economics is currently edited by M. Dresner

More articles in Research in Transportation Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().