Search results

Low cost carriers (LCC) in the Asia Pacific are pursuing a strategy of marketing the aesthetic qualities of their cabin crew in order to differentiate their “value proposition”. This strategy concentrates on the physical dispositions of employees, thus mobilising the concepts of aesthetic and sexualised labour for commercial purposes. This paper aims to investigate some of the practical and ethical issues of such a strategy. In addition, the paper seeks to explore the boundary between the theoretical concepts of aesthetic and sexualised labour.

Presents two vignettes from the emerging LCC industry in the Asia Pacific. The first vignettes is of Virgin Blue, a LCC operating in the Australian domestic airline industry; the second vignette is of Air Asia, first established as a domestic LCC in Malaysia, but has now expanded to international short‐haul routes within the region.

The strategic deployment of aesthetic and sexualised labour in LCCs is ethically problematic on a number of levels. Concomitantly, this strategy is potentially undermined by the contradictory focus on cost minimisation, essential for LCC survival. Thus, the use of aesthetic and sexualised labour as a commercial strategy has the potential to become unstable over time because of the competitive dynamics and the somewhat paradoxical need to reduce costs while improving service standards.

The conceptual boundary between aesthetic and sexualised labour is explored in the new LCC industry in the Asia Pacific. The ethical and practical consequences, and the sustainability of such a strategy in this new environment are considered.

The passenger air travel market has recently been impacted by two major innovations: first, in the 1990s, the rise of “low-cost carrier” (LCC) airlines offering cheap one-way point-to-point tickets, and then, in the new millennium, the emergence and enthusiastic adoption by consumers of online Internet booking systems. It has been suggested that the transparency of Internet booking would result in only the lowest fare offerings being sustainable in the market, and the simplicity and efficiency of LCCs would mean that it would be their fares that would be the lowest.

With the growth of unstructured data, opportunities to generate insights into supply chain risks in low cost countries (LCCs) are emerging. Sourcing risk has primarily focused on short-term mitigation. This paper aims to offer an approach that uses newsfeed data to assess regional supply base risk in LCC’s for the apparel sector, which managers can use to plan for future risk on a long-term planning horizon.

This paper demonstrates that the bulk of supplier risk assessments focus on short-term responses to disruptions in developed countries, revealing a gap in assessments of long-term risks for supply base expansion in LCCs. This paper develops an approach for predicting and planning for long-term supply base risk in LCC’s to address this shortfall. A machine-based learning algorithm is developed that uses the analysis of competing hypotheses heuristic to convert data from multiple news feeds into numerical risk scores and visual maps of supply chain risk. This paper demonstrates the approach by converting large amounts of unstructured data into two measures, risk impact and risk probability, leading to visualization of country-level supply base risks for a global apparel company.

This paper produced probability and impact scores for 23 distinct supply base risks across 10 countries in the apparel sector. The results suggest that the most significant long-term risks of supply disruption for apparel in LCC’s are human resource regulatory risks, workplace issues, inflation costs, safety violations and social welfare violations. The results suggest that apparel brands seeking suppliers in the regions of Cambodia, India, Bangladesh, Brazil and Vietnam should be aware of the significant risks in these regions that may require mitigative action.

This approach establishes a novel approach for objectively projecting future global sourcing risk, and yields visually mapped outcomes that can be applied in forecasting and planning for future risks when considering sourcing locations in LCC’s.

Low cost carriers (LCCs) have become one of the most significantly growing parts of the airline servicing market. This new player has redesigned the whole airline industry, which was previously led by the national/international full-service airline companies. Considering such advancements, the hub locations of LCCs became an important issue than ever before. Within this concept, a guiding framework is developed for an LCC company, which is in search of a new hub airport location within Turkey to satisfy the demand and attract new passengers.

An interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) sets based weighted aggregated sum product assessment (WASPAS) and multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis (MULTIMOORA) methods are developed for decision-making processes.

Five airport locations are evaluated using the developed method. Results showed that in determining hub locations for LCCs, potential number of passengers of the city, airport quality and the number of hotels within the city are obtained as the three most important criteria among 12 evaluation criteria. The best location for the LCC company is determined as Antalya Airport.

To apply the proposed method to a different set of alternatives, data gathered on comparing location of alternatives from experts should be updated.

Proposed hybrid framework is presented as the first time in the literature as a decision-making tool. In order to validate framework's applicability, efficiency and effectiveness, a comparison and a sensitivity analysis are conducted at the end of the study.

Research analyzing competition and individual carriers' financial condition's influence on pricing behavior in the airline industry are presented in the first part of the book. The initial chapter by Manuel Hernandez, Anirban Sengupta, and Steven Wiggins directly tests whether competition creates a challenge for legacy carriers practicing nonlinear pricing such that passengers are charged different prices for the same flight without cost justification. The authors use transactions level data, which has the advantage of allowing an empirical examination of the effect of Southwest and other LCCs on both the level and structure of fares of legacy carriers. The analysis is performed by defining a menu of airline fare types according to restrictive ticket characteristics to then evaluate the competitive effects of both Southwest and other LCCs, including adjacent and potential competition from Southwest, on the relative pricing behavior of major carriers. Findings suggest that competition from Southwest has an important effect on both the level and fare structure of legacy carriers. In particular, direct and potential competition from Southwest both lower the fare per mile and compress the fare structure by decreasing the premia of the highest fares, including first-class tickets, over the lowest fares. Adjacent competition from Southwest and direct competition from other LCCs only seem to significantly affect the fare level.

This paper aims to identify drivers of efficiency and their influence on airline performances in South Africa. Unfortunately, the methods currently used to measure airline efficiency fail to address the heterogeneity problem, which blurs inefficiency.

To remedy the heterogeneity problem, this paper adopts the meta-frontier framework to identify drivers of efficiency. The interesting feature of the model is that it ensures that heterogeneous airlines are compared based on one homogeneous technology. The model is tested using a panel data sample of nine South African airlines, which operated from 2015 to 2018.

The paper demonstrates that structural drivers, namely, “aircraft size”, and “airline ownership” and one executional driver, namely, “the cost structure” significantly influence (p < 0.05) airline efficiency thereby corroborating evidence from some prior studies.

First, because of the small size of the industry, fewer airlines and a lack of detailed data, the study could not consider other important factors such as optimal routing and network structure. Second, a more rigorous analysis over a period of time would yield better understanding about the growth of the industry in South Africa and recognise the variation in the influence of drivers of efficiency on airline performances over time.

The results have potential policy implications. First, as the market in South Africa is too small to operate with a smaller aircraft probably, for airlines that operate with smaller aircraft to operate efficiently they should first identify niche markets where they can have a route monopoly. Second, while all state-owned airlines are perfect statehood symbols that define and represent countries, most state carriers in South Africa are highly inefficient. The researcher recommends policymakers to privatise state airlines or seek equity partners. Many nationalised airlines have turned losses to profits in the run-up to privatisation. British Airways, once a large burden on the British taxpayer, is now one of the world’s most efficient airlines. After the privatisation of Air France and Iberia, all two turned from loss-making concerns into profitable airlines. It, therefore, makes no sense for the South African government to expect state carriers to pursue a commercial mandate with such political interference. The very notion of efficiency itself is at risk.

This paper is a first attempt to identify drivers of operational efficiency using a bootstrapped meta-frontier approach in the airline industry in South Africa. By applying the meta-frontier approach the paper ensures that all heterogeneous airlines are assessed based on their distance from a common and identical frontier.

The purpose of this study was to examine airline passengers’ repurchase decision-making process by developing a sturdy theoretical framework comprising in-flight core-product and service-encounter quality, brand attitude, image, trust and love. The authors also attempted to examine if such decision formation differs across full-service and low-cost airlines in South Korea.

A quantitative method was used to achieve research objectives. For assessment of the conceptual framework and test of research hypotheses, a structural equation modeling and test for metric invariance were used.

The results revealed that in-flight product and service-encounter quality significantly affected their subsequent variables, and their impact on intention was mediated by brand attitude, image, trust and love. In addition, brand image along with brand trust included the strongest influence on intention. Findings also indicated that the relationships among brand attitude, image, trust and love significantly differed between full-service and low-cost airlines.

Increasing the customer retention rate is a key component of airline business success. This study made an important contribution to advancing the existing knowledge on what factors induce airline customers’ decision to repurchase a particular airline product and how such factors are interrelated with each other within the proposed model.

This research was the first to explore that the relationship strength among brand image, brand attitude, brand trust and brand love are not equal between full-service and low-cost airline passenger groups.

The deterioration of surface mounted solder and adhesive joints on different substrate materials under thermal cycling was investigated metallographically. Ceramic chip resistors and leadless chip carriers were soft‐soldered or glued onto alumina, FR‐4, aluminium or steel boards and the various cracking modes were observed. Fatigue cracking in the solder under the component (mode A) took place in the case of resistors on an Al substrate and carriers on all boards except alumina. Cracking on the outward surface near the upper and lower corners (mode B) occurred on all boards, but most notably on alumina. Adhesive joints seemed to offer the highest fatigue strength, but their electrical properties suffered continuously in the course of cycling even though cracking was not observed at all in many cases.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of switching costs (SwCs) on established firm cost behaviour towards a competitive entry in the Spanish domestic airline market, taking into account the entrant profile and airport capacity restrictions.

The dynamic model is based on information of 193 Spanish domestic routes in which incumbents react to entrants (quarterly data during 10 years, 620 reactions are analysed). The balanced panel used is constructed by setting up a multiple-source database based on accounting and industrial engineering procedures.

Results show that both entrant profile and regulatory constraints conditions incumbent cost reaction (CR) to entry at the route-level. Regression models show that the relationship between SwCs and incumbent reaction is moderated by the entrant profile and the regulatory conditions of the market.

This study reveals the importance of policy measures aimed at reducing firm market power and increasing consumer protection in the airline industry, in which SwCs are artificially created at the company’s discretion and where operating costs at the route-level need to be evaluated together with the various service elements.

This study complements current literature related to incumbent CR to entry in the airline industry since it analyses the specific reaction performed by a carrier at the route-level. Moreover, it analyses the whole set of routes in the Spanish domestic market rather than a selection of it. It also explicitly includes three alternative measures of SwCs that can influence such incumbent reaction.

Esta investigación analiza el papel de los costes de cambio en el comportamiento en costes de las empresas establecidas ante las entradas competitivas en el mercado aéreo nacional español, teniendo en cuenta el perfil de los entrantes y las restricciones de capacidad de los aeropuertos.

El modelo dinámico propuesto se basa en la información de 193 rutas nacionales españolas en las que los implicados reaccionan ante los nuevos entrantes (datos trimestrales durante 10 años, se analizan 620 reacciones). El panel equilibrado utilizado se construye configurando una base de datos de múltiples fuentes basada en procedimientos de contabilidad de costes e ingeniería industrial.

Los resultados muestran que tanto el perfil del entrante como las restricciones a la entrada condicionan la reacción en costes del implicado ante la entrada a nivel de ruta. Los resultados de las regresiones muestran que la relación entre los costes de cambio y la reacción del implicado está moderada tanto por el perfil del entrante como por las condiciones regulatorias del mercado.

Este estudio revela la importancia de las medidas de política destinadas a reducir el poder de mercado de las empresa y a aumentar la protección del consumidor en el sector de las aerolíneas, en las que los costes de cambio se crean artificialmente a discreción de la compañía y donde los costes operativos a nivel de ruta deben evaluarse juntos con diversos elementos de servicio.

Este estudio complementa la literatura actual relacionada con la reacción del implicado ante la entrada en el sector de las aerolíneas, ya que analiza la reacción específica realizada por las compañías a nivel de ruta. Además, analiza de forma exhaustiva el conjunto de rutas en el mercado nacional español en lugar de una muestra de ellas. También, incluye explícitamente tres medidas alternativas de costes de cambio que pueden influir en dicha reacción predominante.

This chapter reviews the key results obtained in previous studies of airline mergers. It is found that the effect of mergers on airfares is dependent on the network configurations of merging airlines. Fare increases are frequently observed on overlapped routes. However, if the networks of two merging airlines are complementary, the expanded network after the merger leads to cost savings, increase in travel options, and improvement in service quality. Therefore, in a deregulated market, with few entry barriers, relaxing merger regulations is likely to improve welfare. However, most welfare evaluations do not incorporate quality changes or dynamic competition effects. Empirical investigations are primarily ex post analysis of mergers that have already passed antitrust reviews. The relationship between market concentration and welfare might be nonlinear and market specific. Therefore, airline mergers and alliances should be reviewed case by case. Methodological improvements are needed in future studies to control for the effects of complicating factors inherent in ex post evaluations.