IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aub/autbar/683.07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Airline Competition and Network Structure

Author

Abstract

This paper characterizes the equilibria in airline networks and their welfare implications in an unregulated environment. Competing airlines may adopt either fully-connected (FC) or hub-and-spoke (HS) network structures; and passengers exhibiting low brand loyalty to their preferred carrier choose an outside option to travel so that markets are partially served by airlines. In this context, carriers adopt hubbing strategies when costs are sufficiently low, and asymmetric equilibria where one carrier chooses a FC strategy and the other chooses a HS strategy may arise. Quite interestingly, flight frequency can become excessive under HS network configurations.

Suggested Citation

  • Ricardo Flores-Fillol, 2007. "Airline Competition and Network Structure," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 683.07, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    • Handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:683.07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://pareto.uab.es/wp/2007/68307.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brueckner, Jan K. & Girvin, Raquel, 2008. "Airport noise regulation, airline service quality, and social welfare," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 19-37, January.
    2. Marco Alderighi & Alessandro Cento & Peter Nijkamp & Piet Rietveld, 2005. "Network competition - the co-existence of hub-and-spoke and point-to-point," ERSA conference papers ersa05p703, European Regional Science Association.
    3. Jan Brueckner & Ricardo Flores-Fillol, 2007. "Airline Schedule Competition," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 30(3), pages 161-177, May.
    4. Ken Hendricks & Michele Piccione & Guofu Tan, 1999. "Equilibria in Networks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(6), pages 1407-1434, November.
    5. Brueckner, Jan K & Whalen, W Tom, 2000. "The Price Effects of International Airline Alliances," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 503-545, October.
    6. Brueckner, Jan K. & Spiller, Pablo T., 1991. "Competition and mergers in airline networks," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 323-342, September.
    7. Jan K. Brueckner, 2004. "Network Structure and Airline Scheduling," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 291-312, June.
    8. Barla, Philippe & Constantatos, Christos, 2005. "Strategic interactions and airline network morphology under demand uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 703-716, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bilotkach, Volodymyr & Fageda, Xavier & Flores-Fillol, Ricardo, 2010. "Scheduled service versus personal transportation: The role of distance," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 60-72, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Flores-Fillol, Ricardo, 2009. "Airline competition and network structure," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 966-983, December.
    2. Wang, Chunan & Wang, Xiaoyu, 2019. "Airport congestion delays and airline networks," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 328-349.
    3. Anming Zhang & Yimin Zhang & Joseph A. Clougherty, 2011. "Competition and Regulation in Air Transport," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 35, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Babić, Danica & Begović, Boris & Levajković, Tijana, 2023. "Probabilistic model for the impact of fear of flying on airline network structures," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    5. Wang, Chunan & Wang, Xiaoyu, 2019. "Why do airlines prefer multi-hub networks?," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 56-74.
    6. Rafael Moner Colonques & Ricardo Flores Fillol, 2006. "Strategic Effects Of Airline Alliances," Working Papers. Serie AD 2006-06, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    7. Bilotkach, Volodymyr & Fageda, Xavier & Flores-Fillol, Ricardo, 2013. "Airline consolidation and the distribution of traffic between primary and secondary hubs," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 951-963.
    8. Pels, Eric, 2021. "Optimality of the hub-spoke system: A review of the literature, and directions for future research," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 1-10.
    9. Silva, Hugo E. & Verhoef, Erik T. & van den Berg, Vincent A.C., 2014. "Airline route structure competition and network policy," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 320-343.
    10. Jan K. Brueckner & Ricardo Flores-Fillol, 2006. "Airline Schedule Competition: Product-Quality Choice in a Duopoly Model," Working Papers 050629, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    11. Presto, Felix & Gollnick, Volker & Lau, Alexander & Lütjens, Klaus, 2022. "Flight frequency regulation and its temporal implications," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 106-118.
    12. Calzada, Joan & Fageda, Xavier & Safronov, Roman, 2022. "How do global airline alliances affect flight frequency? Evidence from Russia," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    13. Fu, Xiaowen & Jin, Huan & Liu, Shaoxuan & Oum, Tae H. & Yan, Jia, 2019. "Exploring network effects of point-to-point networks: An investigation of the spatial patterns of Southwest Airlines’ network," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 36-45.
    14. Ricardo Flores-Fillol & Rafael Moner-Colonques, 2011. "Endogenous Mergers of Complements with Mixed Bundling," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 39(3), pages 231-251, November.
    15. Brueckner, Jan K. & Flores-Fillol, Ricardo, 2020. "Market structure and quality determination for complementary products: Alliances and service quality in the airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    16. Flores-Fillol, Ricardo, 2009. "Congested hubs," Working Papers 2072/15844, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    17. Brueckner, Jan K. & Zhang, Anming, 2010. "Airline emission charges: Effects on airfares, service quality, and aircraft design," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 44(8-9), pages 960-971, September.
    18. Fageda, Xavier & Flores-Fillol, Ricardo & Lin, Ming Hsin, 2020. "Vertical differentiation and airline alliances: The effect of antitrust immunity," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    19. Kawamori, Tomohiko & Lin, Ming Hsin, 2013. "Airline mergers with low cost carriers," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 63-71.
    20. Jan Brueckner & Ricardo Flores-Fillol, 2007. "Airline Schedule Competition," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 30(3), pages 161-177, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    fully-connected networks; hub-and-spoke networks; brand loyalty; fully-served markets; partially-served markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
    • L93 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Air Transportation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:683.07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Xavier Vila (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ufuabes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.