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In 2021, the airline industry was affected by COVID-19, and many airlines suffered losses. The main reason for the loss were the decline in revenue and the surge in costs. Therefore, in terms of creating the competitive advantage of airlines, "price war" is no longer applicable, and improving service quality has become an effective means. Customer satisfaction is the most effective indicator to measure service quality. In this study, a satisfaction evaluation system is established based on structural equation model and customer satisfaction importance matrix. Then, a questionnaire is designed to analyze the influence of different factors on customer satisfaction. The research finds that brand image and perceived quality have a great impact on customer satisfaction. In addition, some suggestions for airlines to improve customer satisfaction are given. © 2023 SPIE.
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This paper aims to visualise three financial distress outlooks using computer simulations. The financial distress exposure for airport operations in Malaysia between 1991 and 2021 is given by Altman Z”-score and modelled by the multivariate generalized linear model (MGLM). Seven determinants contributing to the financial distress from literature are examined. The determinant series are fitted individually by using linear model with time series components and autoregressive integrated moving average models to forecast values for the next 10 financial years. Future short- to long-term memory effects following COVID-19 are apparent in time series plots. In the simulations, the MGLM procedure utilised Gaussian, gamma, and Cauchy probability distributions associated with expectations and challenges of doing business as well as uncertainties in the economy. The underlying trends of realistic, optimistic, and pessimistic financial distress outlooks insinuate that the increasing risk of financial distress of airport operations in Malaysia is expected to continue for the next decade.
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The ongoing debate about vaccine passport policies for dealing with COVID-19 has necessitated analyzing its effectiveness in the airline and tourism industry. This study was purposed to analyze how vaccine passports are evaluated by multiple stakeholders, such as airline investors and passengers for leisure/vacation purposes. The findings of the first study show that the implementation of vaccine passports is positively evaluated by airline investors. The results of the second study highlight the role of vaccine passports in reducing perceived health risks, which is integral to leisure travelers' decision making. This study offers a theoretical lens to understand the value of vaccine passports and provides guidance for airline companies and tourism marketers in deciding whether to implement a vaccine passport policy.
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The COVID-19 pandemic increased the risk of financial distress, bankruptcy, or both, in the airline industry. Whether airlines can survive or not during and/or after the pandemic is closely related to their decisions and actions which will enable their success by increasing their resilience. In crisis periods such as COVID-19, the decisions taken by airlines are strategically important for achieving sustainable success. Thus, it is critical to understand which factors are more important for airlines to shape their actions and make correct decisions. This paper investigates the sustainable success factors on which airlines should focus to provide resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. It provides a robust model using the interval type-2 fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (IT2FAHP) and interval type-2 fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (IT2FDEMATEL) to identify and rank success factors. The findings indicate that financial and operational factors are extremely important to ensure resilience for airlines. In addition, the results of the study reveal that operational factors and information sharing factors have an impact on financial factors and customer satisfaction. © National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2021.
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PurposeThe aim of this paper is to explore the evolving nature of the work of cabin crew in a Scandinavian carrier in three eras, drawing on theories of gender and emotional labour.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on ethnographic data from fieldwork, interviews and documents.FindingsFrom being a feminized and temporary occupation for young, upper- and middle-class women in the 1970s, the occupation became a full-time job and with greater diversity of cabin crew. Today there are signs of the job becoming a precarious and temporary one of demanding and devalorized work in a polarized and class-divided labour market. Changing circumstances impact on the emotional labour requirement and terms and conditions at work.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation is that the research design was not initially longitudinal in the sense that the author does not have exactly the same kind of data from each era. The author has, however, been involved in this field for two decades, used multiple methods and interacted with different stakeholders and drew on a unique data material.Practical implicationsThe development in aviation is contributing to new discriminatory practices, driving employee conditions downwards and changing the job demands. This development will have practical consequences for the lives and families of cabin crew.Social implicationsThe analysis illustrates how work ‘constructs' workers and contributes in creating jobs that are not sustainable for the employees. Intensification of work, insecurity and tougher working conditions also challenge key features in the Nordic model such as proper pay, decent work and a life-long employment. Much indicates that the profession is again becoming a temporary one of demanding work with poor working conditions in a polarized and class-divided labour market.Originality/valueThe research contributes to the literature on emotional labour, gender and the evolving nature of the work of cabin crew. The unique data material, the longitudinal aspect of the research and the focus on a single network carrier are good in charting changes over time.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected the airline industry, as it has many sectors, and has created tremendous financial pressure on companies. Flight bans, new regulations, and restrictions increase consumer complaints and are emerging as a big problem for airline companies. Understanding the main reasons triggering complaints and eliminating service failures in the airline industry will be a vital strategic priority for businesses, while reviewing the dimensions of service quality during the COVID-19 pandemic provides an excellent opportunity for academic literature. In this study, 10,594 complaints against two major airlines that offer full-service and low-cost options were analyzed with the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm to categorize them by essential topics. Results provide valuable information for both. Furthermore, this study fills the gap in the existing literature by proposing a decision support system to identify significant service failures through passenger complaints in the airline industry utilizing e-complaints during an unusual situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This paper proposes a formal model to assess the introduction of hydrogen technology in the air transport sector when the initial market is uncovered, a situation relevant to the current COVID-19 crisis. The "flight shame” movement causes some passengers to leave the market while allowing for some willingness-to-pay for cleaner technologies. Starting from a horizontally differentiated duopoly between airlines with old technology and an uncovered market, the introduction of hydrogen technology provides the opportunity for vertical differentiation in line with the increased environmental consciousness of passengers. The principal methodological novelties start from an uncovered market and combine horizontal and vertical differentiation. The main results are the airlines' optimal strategy sets and the adoption strategy dynamics with an increased valuation of quality by passengers. We justify a regulator's intervention and draw several potential policy implications from this dynamic, such as a minimum subsidy level and educational advertising. © 2022
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PurposeThis research adopts the conservation of resources (COR) theory to examine the effects of trust in organizations and trait mindfulness on optimism and perceived stress of flight attendants in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachOnline survey data were collected from 234 flight attendants who work for five low-cost airlines based in Thailand. The data were analyzed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe results show that trust in an organization and trait mindfulness are negatively associated with the perceived stress of flight attendants. Their associations are also partially mediated by optimism. Moreover, the moderating effect analysis reveals that trait mindfulness intensifies the positive association between trust in organizations and optimism.Originality/valueThe evidence from this research broadens COR theory by showing that different aspects of resources can be combined to strengthen the ability of individuals to gain more resources to lessen stress.
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Purpose: Gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline industry has faced many restrictions. Based on the determining factor of repurchase intention, this research paper addresses the roles of brand engagement (BE) and consumer trust during the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: A number of 439 out of 500 questionnaires, which were distributed among the Iranian airlines' customers, were completed and returned (an 87% response rate). SmartPLS 3 was used to carry out the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) in order to validate the research hypotheses. Findings: The results show that during the COVID-19 pandemic, BE had a significant effect on customer purchase intention. In addition, BE boosted customer trust and thereby increased repurchase intention. Perceived risks of COVID-19 moderated these relationships. The findings also show that airline customers are highly sensitive to various perceived risks and were especially so during the COVID-19 pandemic. These perceived risks have major impacts on customers' intention to reuse the services of airline companies. High levels of perceived risk decrease customer trust, BE and repurchase intention rates, and vice versa. Practical implications: This paper provides authorities and decision-makers of the air transport industry with several practical recommendations based on the research findings. As the results confirmed, there is a worthwhile relationship between BE and customer trust;regarding the both direct and indirect benefits of customer trust for for-profit firms and the huge importance of trust in creating competitive advantages, different airline companies need to implement various strategies to engage customers with their brand names, and thereby institutionalize trust in their customers' minds during the pandemic. Since customer trust was also found to improve repurchase intention rates significantly, authorities of the airline industry must take actions to reduce feelings of mistrust and risk among consumers and increase customer trust during COVID-19. Originality/value: This paper is the first to explore the effect of BE on airline customers' repurchase intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has produced practical suggestions to employees and activists of the air transport industry regarding the use of BE as a tool to restore customer trust during and after the COVID-19 epidemic. This research focuses on the airline industry, which is particularly interesting given the industry's intensely competitive environment and the dramatic effect of COVID-19 on the industry. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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The purpose of this study is to reveal the effect of IFRS 16 Leases implementation on the profitability of airline companies all over the world. The research is based on the panel data statistics of 357 airline companies in 59 countries all over the world. The time period used is seven years between 2013 and 2019 for all variables. The findings support the goal of the International Accounting Standards Board to improve the transparency of financial statements and provide the users of financial statements with more credible and comparative financial information and figures. The results of the study indicate that off-balance sheet leases capitalization due to IFRS 16 provides more relevant information than IAS 17. As it was expected, the solvency ratio has an insignificant impact on return on equity. Additionally, the positive significant impact of the share price on the company's profitability was revealed. The results indicate that in 2019 there was a decrease in the profitability of the firms. However, it is suggested that such numbers were obtained due to global macroeconomic factors such as COVID-19 pandemics or severe oil price fluctuations that influence the world economy and specifically the airline industry. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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In this paper, we examine the affects of COVID-19 and related policies on the aviation industry. Using archival data from the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, Department of Transportation Statistics, and the COVID-19 U.S. State Policy database, and an instrumental variable and a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, we find that COVID-19 severity is negatively correlated with both the mean ticket price and the number of passengers for the four major airlines in the US, and that the implementation of COVID-19 control policies is positively correlated with the mean ticket price, while negatively correlated with the number of passengers. © 2022 ACM.
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This study extracted airline data from several online source to examine operational and service strategy of the airline industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results have suggested that airlines were losing market shares in this pandemic situation except for those with high assets. In addition, this study utilizes text analytics techniques to provide insight into service characteristics that distinguish positive from negative reviews. The results suggest that satisfied travelers are demanding services with high empathy and responsiveness, while negative reviewers frequently complain about insufficient operational aspects such as ground operations, mishandled baggage, system glitches, and staff management on handling cancellation. Copyright © 2022, IGI Global.
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Purpose: There has been substantial research on branding globally. However, there is a dearth of studies empirically investigating branding strategies during the pandemic to mitigate COVID-19 effects on the airline industry. The paper considers three factors which are brand familiarity, brand communication and brand reputation to develop the brand trust of customers and that ultimately influence their brand preferences. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on self-administrative surveys as 450 questionnaires were spread, received 339 responses and a total of 301 questionnaires were selected for data analysis by structural-based modeling after the deletion of outliers and partially filled questionnaires. The data was collected through purposive sampling from Malaysian airports. Findings: The findings confirm the relationship of brand communication, brand familiarity and brand reputation to brand trust and brand preference through mediation and directly except direct relationship of brand familiarity to brand preference. The study is limited to the provided dataset of surveys. The present study couldn't interview respondents which can be done by future studies and also effects of COVID-19 can be examined on related industries or through comparative studies among countries. Originality/value: The present study is the first to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on airline brands and explored the strategies to respond to crises. The study is one of the rare studies that consider branding strategies to the uplift airline industry and mitigate post-pandemic effects from the airline sector. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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This paper combines the k-means clustering method in combination with PCA and the system dynamic modeling approach to derive a better insight into the behavior of airline profitability during the time span of 1995 until 2020. The model includes various explanatory variables that capture different aspects of airline economic and operational metrics, whose fluctuations may affect the airline profitability. By forecasting these exogenous variables, the system dynamic model is used to predict airline profitability through 2025 and answer the question of whether the US airline industry will return to its pre-COVID 19 pandemic state. The latter research question can be agreed with, as the effect of introducing a fourth dimension derived from Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to sufficiently cover the variation within the dataset during the years of COVID-19 pandemic diminishes towards the end of the forecast period. Furthermore, the key measures from PCA imply that under the assumption of continuous growth and a non-exogenous shock, future years will not cluster in past years. The six different clusters from 2019 to 2025 showed how the system stays in a certain state for a few years and then drifts further to a new state. There are only a few variables that change to transfer from one cluster to the next. © 2022 The Authors
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In times of great uncertainty for the airline industry, travelers are in search of reliable itineraries now more than ever. With condensed airline schedules and less options, air travelers must rely on making flight connections and manage layover times to arrive at their final destination on time. In an era with readily available information, passengers expect accurate and transparent reliability information to help improve decision making for multi-leg itineraries. However, often for reliability in air travel, this information is incomplete or not useful. In this paper we utilize historical probability distributions of flight arrival and departure times using publicly available data to give an intuitive and predictive flight itinerary reliability metric. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected air-travel in the US and this uncertainty is still being felt with cancellations and delays due to staff shortages and reduced demand. Therefore, we extend the stochastic network model from our previous research to air travel during COVID-19 to see the effects on flight reliability. Using this model, we conduct computational experiments to evaluate air travel through multiple reliability metrics. We show that during periods of high uncertainty, predictive historical distributions of flight data considering recency and seasonal effects are less accurate given many cancellations and a reduced flight schedule. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd
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We examine the impact of the recent restrictions/bans imposed by several nations on air travel to India in the light of the increasing number of infections amid the second wave of covid-19. We employ the standard event study method on a sample of 34 airline stocks across seven nations to find that the recent restrictions/bans on air travel significantly impact the global airline industry, although the country-specific impacts are not similar. We find that the post-event reaction in all nations has been different from those evidenced during the global pandemic declaration. We are the first to examine these impacts during the current wave of the pandemic. It contributes to the literature on the effects of the pandemic on the global airline industry. Further, it also provides practical explanations to the investors on how the airline stocks react to the persistence of the pandemic. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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This paper investigates the relationship between oil and airline stock returns under different time frequencies. First, we propose an Autoregressive moving average model with mixed frequency exogenous variable to analyse the different impacts of oil on airline stock returns on daily, weekly, and monthly basis. We consistently find a negative oil-airline stock return nexus on a daily basis, but a positive relationship on a weekly basis. While the former supports the economic-based channel, the latter is in line with the market inertia channel. Our findings help explain mixed results reported in the literature. Further, our time frequency connectedness analysis shows that the economic-based channel dominates the market inertia channel since the connectedness is more pronounced in the short-run compared to the medium- and long-run. Our block connectedness results highlight that business models of airline firms can play a significant role in affecting the connectedness, in which the low-cost airlines are more sensitive to the oil price changes. It is worth noting that there are distinguished drivers of the oil-airline stock return nexus in different time frequencies. The drivers also vary between the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results are consistent under a battery of robustness checks and deliver important implications to investors, portfolio managers, and executives of airline firms. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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Reynolds discusses the rebound of aircraft operators and struggle with delays. After a 70% drop in aviation operations and a 90% reduction in passengers during the first half of 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic, passenger demand by mid-2022 was close to pre-pandemic levels. However, flight numbers were still down slightly due to airline flight crew and air traffic control staffing challenges, which led to large numbers of delays, cancellations and other disruptions worldwide. Nearly a quarter of all US flights were delayed by an average of an hour each during June-August. There was an increased focus on climate impacts of aviation throughout the year following the publication of the US Aviation Climate Action Plan in Nov 2021, which details the key role that aircraft operations enhancements will continue to play in reducing climate impacts.
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Although travel restrictions imposed by countries are gradually lifted, the airline industry rebounds only when customers’confidence in air travel is restored. Airlines that generate positive customer recommendations during the pandemic can have a competitive advantage in the post-pandemic environment. This article focuses on the prediction of customer recommendations of airlines during the pandemic. The results show that airline ratings established before the pandemic have weak performance, implying that customer recommendations could be based on other factors that are unique to the pandemic. In addition, COVID-19 travel safety of airlines and sentiments hidden in customer reviews are valuable for predicting customer recommendations. The results also confirm that flight duration affects the predictive powers of airline rating established before the pandemic and COVID-19 travel safety rating of airlines. There are important implications for the airline industry. First, airline ratings established before pandemic is not valuable to predict customer recommendations during COVID-19, underpinning the importance of including COVID-19 travel safety measures as part of the airline evaluation criteria in the future. Besides, COVID-19 travel safety is more relevant to customer recommendations in the long-haul markets. When selecting airlines for evaluation, airline rating organizations can give priorities to airlines that offer long-haul flights. IEEE
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The COVID-19 pandemic has recently exacerbated the fierce competition in the transportation businesses. The airline industry took one of the biggest hits as the closure of international borders forced aircraft operators to suspend their international routes, keeping aircraft on the ground without generating revenues while at the same time still requiring adequate maintenance. To maintain their operational sustainability, finding a good balance between cost reductions measure and safety standards fulfillment, including its maintenance procedure, becomes critical. This paper proposes an AI-assisted predictive maintenance scheme that synthesizes prognostics modeling and simulation-based optimization to help airlines decide their optimal engine maintenance approach. The proposed method enables airlines to utilize their diagnostics measurements and operational settings to design a more customized maintenance strategy that takes engine operations conditions into account. Our numerical experiments on the proposed approach resulted in significant cost savings without compromising the safety standards. The experiments also show that maintenance strategies tailored to the failure mode and operational settings (that our framework enables) yield 13% more cost savings than generic optimal maintenance strategies. The generality of our proposed framework allows the extension to other intelligent, safety-critical transportation systems. © 2022 IEEE.