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Supply chains deliver goods and services between shippers and receivers, covering collection, transportation, distribution as well as their handling and storage in between. In particular, transportation services are carried out by different transport modes. In some modern supply chains, different categories of air cargo carriers – combinations, freighter-only, and/or integrators – provide critical transport services.

This chapter develops a methodology for estimating the performance of supply chains served by an air cargo carrier network. The methodology is based on indicators of infrastructure use, technical/technological level, operational factors, economic factors, and environmental performance. This proposed methodology is applied to estimate performance of supply chains served by an integrated air cargo carrier – FedEx Express – operating a single hub in the US domestic air network. Results indicate that the methodology may be useful for estimation of overall supply chain performance under the condition that relevant data are available.

In the Jones–Kierzkowski world of fragmented production, we address a strategic trade issue for development: how to industrialize under the WTO regime. One solution is to generate cross-border externalities, such as becoming the hub of a network of countries, so as to attract foreign investment with collective comparative advantage. Thus the small, remote and pre-industrial Singapore managed to organize a hub–spokes game: achieving a win-win solution for all and gaining the most as the hub. In servicing the spokes for fee, Singapore has earned First World income levels, by the twin patterns of the flying geese and the triangular accord.

This chapter reviews the effects of air transport liberalization, and investigates the roles played by airport-airline vertical arrangements in liberalizing markets. Our investigation concludes that liberalization has led to substantial economic and traffic growth. Such positive outcomes are mainly due to increased competition and efficiency gains in the airline industry, and positive externalities to the overall economy. Liberalization allows airlines to optimize their networks, and thus may introduce substantial demand and financial uncertainty to airports. Vertical arrangements between airlines and airports may offer a wide range of benefits to the parties involved, yet such arrangements could also lead to airline entry barriers which reduce the effects of liberalization. Three approaches have been developed to model the effects of liberalization in complex market conditions, which include the analytical, econometric and computational network methods. These approaches should be selectively utilized in policy studies on liberalization.

The chapter discusses two main themes: shifts in the global geography of aviation toward the developing world and several threats to the future growth of air transportation. The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable realignment of air passenger and air cargo traffic toward middle-income countries and the hubs within those countries.

The chapter documents these shifts, drawing on analyses of airline capacity around the world in 1998 and 2012. Given more rapid population and economic growth in Asia, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, further such developments seem likely. However, the chapter also reviews some of the principal challenges confronting aviation in its second century. These include the higher price of oil, the political challenges involved in building new airport infrastructure (especially in rich democracies), and efforts to limit the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and other air transportation externalities.

The chapter concludes that none of these challenges is very likely to reverse the long-term growth of air traffic but will instead intersect with the broader shift toward emerging markets to produce a still more complex geography of air services. The chapter further contends that the continued expansion of aviation will bring both daunting challenges to the world but also new opportunities to the low-income countries still marginalized in today’s airline networks.

This chapter examines the airline performance effect arising from collaboration between airlines and high speed railway (HSR). The analysis presents scenario simulations using a bi-level model, which takes into account the effect of competition among airlines and HSR. Using real data, we examine the Japanese domestic market and the Japan-based international market: the markets consist of Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Osaka Metropolitan Area, Seoul/Korea, Frankfurt/Germany, Paris/France, London/United Kingdom, and Los Angeles/United States. Analysis of the domestic market assumes airlines and HSR compete against each other, and analysis of the international market assumes airlines only compete with each other. Initially, we conduct performance analysis using a simulation that mimics the current relationship between airlines and HSR. Then we present three scenarios for different combinations of collaboration between airline and HSR based on airline alliances. The results from this exercise are then used to examine the impact of the collaboration on the profits of airlines and HSR, passenger’s utility, and the network design of airlines. Last, we show the potential benefit to airlines – profitability, market share, and demand growth – from the airline-HSR collaboration. Our model shows that in Japan: (1) Airlines can improve their profitability in international operations by the collaboration with HSR when airlines set their hubs so they can connect to HSR; (2) The airline which has a lower unit operating cost than rivals and sets its hubs to connect to HSR can improve its joint profit with HSR through collaboration; (3) Airlines that don’t operate domestic flights and don’t set their hubs to connect to HSR encourage increased fare competition by coordinating with HSR, but their profit decreases. Whether these results are generalizable to other regions should be the subject of future study.

This study develops a method for categorizing airports based on the amount of cargo each airport handles in relation to its passenger traffic. Such a categorization allows for systematic comparisons of airports largely specializing in cargo with those that have more balanced freight/passenger roles. The results show that cargo-focused hub airports (i.e., major cargo-handling airports that handle little or no passenger traffic) in the continental United States shoulder a growing burden in freight movement. One of the most successful of these, Chicago Rockford International Airport, has risen to become the 15th largest airport with respect to domestic cargo shipments on the US mainland, while Texas's Fort Worth Alliance Airport and Seattle's Boeing Field also rank among the top 50. A considerable amount of volatility, however, has accompanied the evolution of this specialized grouping of airports over the past 20 years. Presently, among the 100 airports on the U.S. mainland handling the most domestic freight, cargo-focused hub airports serve only a secondary role, handling less than 5% of domestic air freight shipments as measured by weight. Most major hubs operated by air-freight integrators, such as those developed by FedEx and UPS at Memphis, TN, and Louisville, KY, respectively, are at mixed-purpose airports that have a greater balance of passenger and freight activity. The findings point to some of the unique challenges facing airports that specialize in the movement of freight.

Assessing air cargo strategy from an airport's perspective is relatively novel, and it seems little attention has been paid to this research area. This chapter will address this research gap by introducing an Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas, designed to help build cargo strategies for individual airports.

The Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas can be used as a tool to analyze and improve the air cargo strategy of an airport. The first part of this chapter will explain the different components of the Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas more in detail. The horizontal axis on the canvas differentiates between exogenous and endogenous drivers of airport competitiveness. The vertical axis distinguishes between the airport product and the airport market. The canvas also considers potential disruptors and principal shareholders' objectives. The different components of the canvas allow the analyst to dig into the main features and differentiators of respective airports. The canvas might also be helpful to structure and compare the strategic components and framework of their own or competitors' cargo strategies.

In the second part, the Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas was applied to Brussels Airport to analyze its cargo strategy. The canvas showed several strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats in its current cargo strategy. The completed canvas will let Brussels Airport's executives explore and analyze the strategy of their main competitors and peers' strategy and help them identify potential gaps in their strategies.

Code-sharing, a phenomenon observed in international airline markets, has emerged as an important form of alliance in the domestic U.S. airline industry. Unlike international markets where code-share agreements were often the only way for a carrier to enter into a route serving another country, the post-1980 U.S. airline industry has enjoyed de facto free entry and exit. However, the financial conditions of the mid-1990s combined with various constraints on airport and airspace capacity led domestic carriers to experiment with code-sharing.