Trends and Research in the Decision Sciences: Best Papers from the 2014 Annual Conference

22. Airline Structural Design Choices: Panel Data Analysis

—David West, College of Business, Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, East Carolina University

—Scott Dellana, College of Business, Department of Management Information Systems, East Carolina University

Abstract

The empirical results, based on panel data of 12.35 million flight records of nine domestic carriers from 2004 to 2007, provide evidence that the airline design choices of (1) the network routing structure, (2) the complexity of the aircraft fleet deployed, (3) the operations scale, and (4) the extent of market rivalry explain approximately 80 percent of the differences among airlines’ operational profitability. The flight records were accessed from a database ...