Cost Convergence in the US Airline Industry: An Analysis of Unit Costs 1995–2006

Recent changes in the strategies of US airlines have led to a convergence of unit costs between the network legacy carriers and low-cost carriers. We develop a methodology for breaking down operating cost data reported by the airlines and argue that certain cost categories must be excluded to make a valid comparison between the carrier groups. We find significant evidence of convergence in unit costs excluding fuel and transport-related expenses, and labor unit costs in particular. While network legacy carriers have improved cost efficiency through dramatic labor cost reductions and longer stage length flying, low-cost carriers labor unit costs continue to increase as these former new entrant airlines mature

Government-led contingency planning for urban transit service disruptions

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1982.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCHBibliography: leaves 177-180.by Peter Paul Belobaba.M.S

Assessing Predation in Airline Markets with Low-Fare Competition

Assessment of unfair competitive practices in airline markets has traditionally been based on the analysis of changes in average fares, revenue and traffic following low-fare entry. This paper demonstrates the severe limitations of using such measures. In particular, our case studies show that despite very different perceptions by some analysts of apparent incumbent carrier response to entry, average fares, revenues and traffic measures showed very similar patterns of change in the cases studied. We then use a competitive airline market simulation to illustrate the importance of often ignored factors – revenue management and the flows of connecting network passengers on the flight legs affected by low-fare entry – in explaining the effects of entry on these aggregate measures of airline performance. These simulations results further reinforce the danger in using such measures as indicators of predatory behavior in airline markets

Analysis of the Potential for Delay Propagation in Passenger Airline Networks

In this paper, we analyze the potential for delays to propagate in passenger airline networks. The motivation for this research is the need to better understand the relationship between the scheduling of aircraft and crew members, and the operational performance of such schedules. In particular, when carriers decide how to schedule these costly resources, the focus is primarily on achieving high levels of utilization. The resulting plans, however, often have little slack, limiting the schedule's ability to absorb disruption; instead, initial flight delays may propagate to delay subsequent flights as well. Understanding the relationship between planned schedules and delay propagation is a requisite precursor to developing tools for building more robust airline plans. In this paper, we investigate this relationship using flight data provided by two major U.S. carriers, one traditional hub-and-spoke and one “low-fare” carrier

Project Columbiad: Reestablishment of human presence on the Moon

In response to the Report of the Advisory Committee on the future of the U.S. Space Program and a request from NASA's Exploration Office, the MIT Hunsaker Aerospace Corporation (HAC) conducted a feasibility study, known as Project Columbiad, on reestablishing human presence on the Moon before the year 2000. The mission criteria established were to transport a four person crew to the lunar surface at any latitude and back to Earth with a 14-28 day stay on the lunar surface. Safety followed by cost of the Columbiad Mission were the top level priorities of HAC. The resulting design has a precursor mission that emplaces the required surface payloads before the piloted mission arrives. Both the precursor and piloted missions require two National Launch System (NLS) launches. Both the precursor and piloted missions have an Earth orbit rendezvous (EOR) with a direct transit to the Moon post-EOR. The piloted mission returns to Earth via a direct transit. Included among the surface payloads preemplaced are a habitat, solar power plant (including fuel cells for the lunar night), lunar rover, and mecanisms used to cover the habitat with regolith (lunar soil) in order to protect the crew members from severe solar flare radiation