US feeder airlines: Industry structure, networks and performance

Aisling Reynolds-Feighan

Open Access publications from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: This paper examines the US airline industry in terms of the relationships between the three largest full service carriers, American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines, and the set of regional carriers that are contracted to provide feeder services to them. The evolution of the regional carriers and the full service carriers are compared and recorded and the current industry structure and size is described. The paper uses the full set of Official Airline Guide (OAG) schedules for 2017 to analyse the industry structure and scale, overlap and seasonality in service provision among the groups of carriers and to understand the network organisation and capacity deployment strategy of the largest network carriers in the US market. The analysis provides evidence to explain how the large airlines are improving their cost and financial performance as well as significantly improving their operational efficiency through the achievement of high overall load factors. The sophistication in each airline’s schedule design and service delivery is highlighted.

Keywords: Regional airlines; Feeder airlines; Seasonality; Airline network structures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in: Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 117() 2018-11

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http://hdl.handle.net/10197/9551 Open Access version, 2018 (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: US feeder airlines: Industry structure, networks and performance (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucn:oapubs:10197/9551

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