IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dlw/wpaper/05-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

There and Back Again: Airline Routes, Fares and Passenger Flows in Network Equilibria

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph I. Daniel

    (Department of Economics, University of Delaware)

  • Munish Pahwa

    (MBNA, Newark, DE)

Abstract

We calculate mutual-best-response route networks for profit maximizing airlines serving large US air-traffic-hub cities. A simulated annealing algorithm determines which of over ten thousand potential routes receive direct or hub-and-spoke service. DOT’s Origin and Destination Survey is used to calibrate airline revenue and cost functions. Simulated route structures, airfares, passenger flows, and market concentration levels closely approximate actual US networks comprising over seventy percent of domestic air travel. The results support several controversial positions regarding airline competition. Average airfares by route are consistent with price-taking behavior. Existing industry concentration levels can be justified by cost-reducing economies of scale and scope. Control of multiple airports by individual airlines currently has minimal effects on airfares or passenger flows. Socially optimal route structures would concentrate traffic at fewer and larger airports—but reduce costs only modestly. Airport pricing and capacity can significantly affect network traffic patterns. Investigation of strategic pricing is left for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph I. Daniel & Munish Pahwa, 2005. "There and Back Again: Airline Routes, Fares and Passenger Flows in Network Equilibria," Working Papers 05-07, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:dlw:wpaper:05-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://graduate.lerner.udel.edu/sites/default/files/ECON/PDFs/RePEc/dlw/WorkingPapers/2005/UDWP2005-07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goffe, William L & Ferrier, Gary D & Rogers, John, 1992. "Simulated Annealing: An Initial Application in Econometrics," Computer Science in Economics & Management, Kluwer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 5(2), pages 133-146, May.
    2. Borenstein, Severin, 1990. "Airline Mergers, Airport Dominance, and Market Power," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 400-404, May.
    3. Reiss, Peter C & Spiller, Pablo T, 1989. "Competition and Entry in Small Airline Markets," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(2), pages 179-202, October.
    4. Berry, Steven T, 1990. "Airport Presence as Product Differentiation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 394-399, May.
    5. Van Breedam, Alex, 1995. "Improvement heuristics for the Vehicle Routing Problem based on simulated annealing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 480-490, November.
    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. Sayed Ajaz Hussain & Serkan Bahceci, 2008. "Network Structure and Design in the Deregulated U.S. Airline Industry: an Argument for Re-Regulation?," Working Papers tecipa-325, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    2. Martin, Shane L., 2011. "Analysis of prospective airline mergers using a simulated annealing model," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 80-87.

    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. Claudio Agostini, 2005. "El Mercado de Transporte Aéreo: Lecciones para Chile de una Revisión de la Literatura," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv163, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    2. Agostini, Claudio A. & Inostroza, Diego & Willington, Manuel, 2015. "Price effects of airlines frequent flyer programs: The case of the dominant firm in Chile," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 283-297.
    3. Gil, Ricard & Kim, Myongjin, 2021. "Does competition increase quality? Evidence from the US airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    4. Richard, Oliver, 2003. "Flight frequency and mergers in airline markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 907-922, June.
    5. Federico Ciliberto & Elie Tamer, 2009. "Market Structure and Multiple Equilibria in Airline Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(6), pages 1791-1828, November.
    6. Gayle, Philip G. & Wu, Chi-Yin, 2013. "A re-examination of incumbents’ response to the threat of entry: Evidence from the airline industry," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 119-130.
    7. Damien J. Neven & Lars-Hendrik Röller & Zhentang Zhang, 1997. "Union Power and Product Market Competition: Evidence from the Airline Industry," CIG Working Papers FS IV 97-38, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    8. Aguirregabiria, Victor & Ho, Chun-Yu, 2012. "A dynamic oligopoly game of the US airline industry: Estimation and policy experiments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 168(1), pages 156-173.
    9. Zhang, Yahua & Sampaio, Breno & Fu, Xiaowen & Huang, Zhibin, 2018. "Pricing dynamics between airline groups with dual-brand services," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 46-59.
    10. Steven Berry & Martin Gaynor & Fiona Scott Morton, 2019. "Do Increasing Markups Matter? Lessons from Empirical Industrial Organization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 44-68, Summer.
    11. Ciliberto, Federico & Williams, Jonathan, 2010. "Does Multimarket Contact Facilitate Tacit Collusion? Inference on Conjectural Parameters in the Airline Industry," MPRA Paper 24888, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Gayle, Philip G. & Yimga, Jules O., 2018. "How much do consumers really value air travel on-time performance, and to what extent are airlines motivated to improve their on-time performance?," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 31-41.
    13. Encaoua, David & Moreaux, Michel & Perrot, Anne, 1996. "Compatibility and competition in airlines demand side network effects," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 701-726, October.
    14. Brueckner, Jan K. & Lee, Darin & Singer, Ethan S., 2013. "Airline competition and domestic US airfares: A comprehensivereappraisal," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-17.
    15. Yahua Zhang & David Round, 2009. "Policy Implications of the Effects of Concentration and Multimarket Contact in China’s Airline Market," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 34(4), pages 307-326, June.
    16. Doi, Naoshi & Ohashi, Hiroshi, 2019. "Market structure and product quality: A study of the 2002 Japanese airline merger," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 158-193.
    17. Federico Ciliberto & Emily E. Cook & Jonathan W. Williams, 2019. "Network Structure and Consolidation in the U.S. Airline Industry, 1990–2015," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 54(1), pages 3-36, February.
    18. Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2021. "Profit margins in U.S. domestic airline routes," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 245-251.
    19. Steven Berry & Michael Carnall & Pablo T. Spiller, 1996. "Airline Hubs: Costs, Markups and the Implications of Customer Heterogeneity," NBER Working Papers 5561, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Sophia Li & Joe Mazur & Yongjoon Park & James Roberts & Andrew Sweeting & Jun Zhang, 2022. "Repositioning and market power after airline mergers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 53(1), pages 166-199, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Hub-and-spoke airline networks; simulated annealing; commercial aviation; airline competition; airline mergers; airfares; airport congestion; and airport capacity.;
    All these keywords.

    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:dlw:wpaper:05-07. 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: Saul Hoffman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deudeus.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.