Airline business

12 important questions on Airline business

What is the S-curve effect, and what effect has more competition (>2) have on the S curve?

S-curve shows the how market share can increase as an airline offers more flights, with the S-curve, a 1% increase in flights, leads to a 1% increase in the number of passengers. With more competition, the curve moves to the left. Indicating a bigger effect on the increase in passengers.

Name a few characteristics of an Hub.

Spatial concentration needed around the hub (near a big city for example)
A hub is a central point in an airline network



Temporal concentration needed for convenient transfer times
in the end, the airline decides what a hub is!

What implications on scheduling flights does the S-curve give airlines?

From the articles, Button and Drexler (2005) & Wei and Hansen (2005)
airlines are incentivised to use smaller aircrafts, higher frequency, lower load factor and therefore lower margins. All in order to gain more market share.
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Why are airlines focused on offering flights at the peak of demand?

To keep market share.

Summarized, to meet growing demand or keep market share airlines try to:

Increase the load factor
increase frequency
increase aircraft size

Which airlines do not focus on frequency competition?

Low cost carriers, as they focus more on leisure travel.

What did the paper of Givoni and Rietveld, (2010) tell us about frequency competition?

Increasing frequency will probably not result in significant benefits to passengers
Lowering frequency will probably not disbenefit passengers Decreasing marginal utility of frequency.

In a hub and spokes network, how are variable costs increased or decreased, when is the effect of a variable cost decrease bigger?

Variable costs increase as the hub/spokes network passengers have to travel to two links, the variable costs decrease as the number of passengers per link increases, this effect will outweighs the increase as  density economies are relatively strong.

What are the two main factors that determine an airline optimal output?

Willingness to Pay and density economies

In what way do newer aircrafts form a threat to the hub/spokes network?

Newer smaller aircrafts, such as the Boeing 787 offer airlines the opportunity to fly nonstop between destinations that were originally offered in a hub spoke form.

What are the most important factors whether an HS or P2P is used

Fixed costs and network choice.

How is competition determined by traditional airlines?

By schedule competition, high frequencies attract more passengers

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