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Airline energy efficiency measures using a network range-adjusted measure with unified natural and managerial disposability

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Abstract

In recent years, the issue of aviation carbon emissions has caused wide public concern. How to measure airline performance under the premise of considering aviation carbon emissions has become a hot issue. In this paper, airline energy efficiency is divided into three stages as follows: operations, services, and sales. A network range-adjusted measure with unified natural and managerial disposability model is proposed to calculate the environmental efficiencies of 29 airlines from 2008 to 2015. We get some interesting results. (1) Scandinavian has the highest overall efficiency among these 29 airlines during 2008–2015. (2) For the other 28 airlines, the improvement of the undesirable outputs is not the most urgent work to improve overall efficiency. (3) The overall efficiency has no obvious fluctuation in this period.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that improved this paper significantly.

Funding

This research is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.71403034 and 71701088) and National Social Science Foundation of China (Nos. 19AJY011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Qiang Cui

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  1. Qiang Cui
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Correspondence to Qiang Cui.

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Glossary of terms

Glossary of terms

Abbreviation

Full name

Meaning

NE

Number of Employees

The number of employees that the airline employs and the part-time employees have been converted into full-time ones.

AK

Aviation Kerosene

The yearly consumption amount of aviation kerosene.

ASK

Available Seat Kilometers

The sum of fly kilometers multiplied by the number of seats available for sale.

FS

Fleet Size

The total amount of the aircraft in service containing the rented ones.

RPK

Revenue Passenger Kilometers

The sum of flight kilometers multiplied by the number of passengers charged.

GHG

Greenhouse gases emission

The total carbon dioxide equivalent of GHG and the other GHG (except CO2) have been converted.

SC

Sales Costs

The total expense on sales marketing and commissions.

TR

Total Revenue

The total revenue containing passenger income freight income and non-aviation income.

DEA

Data Envelopment Analysis

A mathematic programming model to evaluate efficiency which was proposed by Charnes et al. (1978).

DMU

Decision-Making Units

The basic evaluation objects of DEA models.

RAM

Range-Adjusted Measure

A kind of DEA model which is linear and can show the slacks of inputs and outputs.

SBM

Slacks-Based Measure

A kind of DEA model which is nonlinear and can show the slacks of inputs and outputs.

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Cui, Q. Airline energy efficiency measures using a network range-adjusted measure with unified natural and managerial disposability. Energy Efficiency 13, 1195–1211 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-020-09868-2

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