Airline Safety Improvement Through Experience with Near‐Misses: A Cautionary Tale

In recent years, the U.S. commercial airline industry has achieved unprecedented levels of safety, with the statistical risk associated with U.S. commercial aviation falling to 0.003 fatalities per 100 million passengers. But decades of research on organizational learning show that success often breeds complacency and failure inspires improvement. With accidents as rare events, can the airline industry continue safety advancements? This question is complicated by the complex system in which the industry operates where chance combinations of multiple factors contribute to what are largely probabilistic (rather than deterministic) outcomes. Thus, some apparent successes are realized because of good fortune rather than good processes, and this research intends to bring attention to these events, the near‐misses. The processes that create these near‐misses could pose a threat if multiple contributing factors combine in adverse ways without the intervention of good fortune. Yet, near‐misses (if recognized as such) can, theoretically, offer a mechanism for continuing safety improvements, above and beyond learning gleaned from observable failure. We test whether or not this learning is apparent in the airline industry. Using data from 1990 to 2007, fixed effects Poisson regressions show that airlines learn from accidents (their own and others), and from one category of near‐misses—those where the possible dangers are salient. Unfortunately, airlines do not improve following near‐miss incidents when the focal event has no clear warnings of significant danger. Therefore, while airlines need to and can learn from certain near‐misses, we conclude with recommendations for improving airline learning from all near‐misses.     

航空公司收入管理价格与舱位控制的统一分析

收入管理对于改善民航企业的经济效益、增强民航企业的竞争能力具有重大意义. 文章 运用随机过程理论和最大凹向包络原理,探讨航空公司客运收入管理研究中动态价格与舱位 控制的统一分析模型,即在任意订票时刻,决定航班的哪些舱位该开放,以什么价格开放,从而 实现单个航班的收入最大化. 文章指出,航空公司可通过三阶段方法来获取最优的动态价格与 舱位控制策略,即确定最优价格集、开放舱位数及最优价格. 最后给出了实例分析.     

Measuring the Benefit of Offering Auxiliary Services: Do Bag‐Checkers Differ in Their Sensitivities to Airline Itinerary Attributes?

When firms evaluate their service system design choices, there is typically more uncertainty surrounding the value that a particular auxiliary service provides than there is on the cost of providing that service. To help inform this decision, we propose an approach where we compare the relative value of the segment of passengers who use an auxiliary service to the relative value of the segment that does not use it. We demonstrate this approach for a typical auxiliary service common to the airline industry. In 2008, most US airlines implemented checked baggage fee policies to decrease their costs by reducing the number of customer service agents needed in the check‐in and baggage handling processes. The success of this change has led to a current debate at many of these airlines on whether to make further staffing cuts in these areas, essentially making it even less attractive for passengers to check their baggage. Our proposed methodology helps answer whether passengers who continue to check bags in today's baggage‐fee era are more or less valuable than passengers who do not check bags. We explore this question empirically by examining, through a stated preference survey, if a history of checking or not checking bags can be used to segment passengers based on how their itinerary choices are influenced by common airline service attributes (on‐time performance, itinerary time, number of connections, airfare, and schedule delay). Contrary to the opinions of some top airline executives, we find that the passengers who continue to check bags at airlines that charge baggage fees are generally less sensitive to differences in three of these important service attributes and are less likely to switch airlines when a competing airline improves its offerings along these dimensions. Thus, airlines that charge for checked bags should consider improving the customer experience for their bag‐checking passengers, as they represent a potentially more valuable segment class to the airline.     

Operations research in the management of the airlines

This paper is intended to present an introduction to the use of operations research in the international airline industry, and to demonstrate the scope and significance of the airline OR activities. First, the special reasons for the viability and spread of airline OR are discussed. Then a functional framework for an airline is outlined, to be used in analyzing the problems of an airline and relating the OR work to it. Four major applications are described, corresponding to four major components of the framework. These applications are: schedule development, overbooking control, crew scheduling and engine management, respectively. In each case we describe the problem and its significance, indicate the types of solution techniques which have been developed, and assess the implemented solutions. The paper concludes with comments on the current state-of-the-art and the future of airline OR. A detailed bibliography is given.Both of the authors have been operations research directors in major airlines and more recently have focused their attention upon the industry as academic researchers. This background has provided us with an unusual opportunity to analyze the role of OR in the airlines, and our paper seeks to share with the reader some of the insights we have gained thereby.     

Revenue management games with government mandate

In 2007, the Chinese aviation authority asked the five airlines that offer service between Shanghai and Beijing to form an express shuttle alliance so that tickets from one airline could be used for any flight offered by any of the other airlines. In this paper, we study the impact of such a government mandate on the competitiveness of the market and on airline operations. First we extend a competitive airline seat allocation model to include such a government mandate and provide sufficient conditions for the existence of a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium in such a model. Both our analytical and numerical results show that fewer low-fare seats would be made available in a market with the government mandate, and furthermore, revenues of individual airlines would be lower as well. We then study a seat inventory and price competition game between duopoly airlines with the government mandate and establish the existence of pure-strategy Nash equilibriums. We show that with the government mandate, the airlines would reserve more high-fare seats and raise the prices of high-fare seats. In addition, we show that the revenues of the airlines would decrease as fewer low-fare seats are offered and increase as the prices of high-fare seats are increased. We also discuss how the government mandate should be designed so that the market could operate as efficiently as possible.     

Disentangling the European airlines efficiency puzzle: A network data envelopment analysis approach

In recent years the European airline industry has undergone critical restructuring. It has evolved from a highly regulated market predominantly operated by national airlines to a dynamic, liberalized industry where airline firms compete freely on prices, routes, and frequencies. Although several studies have analyzed performance issues for European airlines using a variety of efficiency measurement methods, virtually none of them has considered two-stage alternatives – not only in this particular European context but in the airline industry in general. We extend the aims of previous contributions by considering a network Data Envelopment Analysis (network DEA) approach which comprises two sub-technologies that can share part of the inputs. Results show that, in general, most of the inefficiencies are generated in the first stage of the analysis. However, when considering different types of carriers several differences emerge – most of the low-cost carriers’ inefficiencies are confined to the first stage. Results also show a dynamic component, since performance differed across types of airlines during the decade 2000–2010.     

Die Rolle des Luftverkehrsrechts und der Haftung bei Flugzeugkatastrophen: Eine Finanzmarktanalyse

Zusammenfassung  Rechtsansprüche gegen Fluggesellschaften und Flugzeughersteller in Folge einer Flugzeugkatastrophe richten sich nach einer Flut rechtlicher Bestimmungen, die aus internationalen Abkommen, Vereinbarungen zwischen Fluglinien sowie aus Bundes- und Landesrecht resultieren. Die jeweilige Rechtsgrundlage in einem spezifischen Fall h?ngt von verschiedenen Umst?nden ab, die mit einem Unfall verbunden sind. Es überrascht daher nicht, dass zugesprochene Schadensersatz- und Schmerzensgeldzahlungen an die Angeh?rigen der Opfer von Fall zu Fall erheblich divergieren. In unserer Studie mit U.S.-amerikanischen Daten untersuchen wir, inwieweit der kurz- und langfristige Erfolg von Fluggesellschaften und Flugzeugherstellern durch Flugzeugkatastrophen beeinflusst wird und wir eruieren diejenigen Determinanten, die Performanceunterschiede erkl?ren k?nnen. Verwandte Untersuchungen haben sich weitgehend auf Effekte für Markennamen oder steigende Versicherungspr?mien als Ursachen für Aktienkursverluste konzentriert. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen darüber hinaus, dass das regulatorische Umfeld einer spezifischen Unglückssituation erheblichen Einfluss darauf hat, wie Finanzm?rkte reagieren. Die Reaktionen der Marktteilnehmer weisen darauf hin, dass die unterschiedlichen Berechnungsgrundlagen für die Opferentsch?digung recht klar erkannt werden.

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The role of aviation laws and legal liability in airplane accidents: A financial market perspective

Summary  Legal liability claims against airlines and airplane manufacturers following an aviation disaster are determined through a myriad of international treaties, intercarrier agreements, and federal and state laws. Which law applies in a specific situation depends on various circumstances surrounding the accident. As a result, pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage awards for the families of the accident victims may vary substantially from case to case. Using U.S. data, our study examines how aviation disasters affect the short and long-term performance of airlines and airplane manufacturers and explores the factors that drive the performance differences. While prior research has largely focused on brand name effects and rising insurance premiums as possible determinants of stock price losses, our results suggest that the regulatory environment that applies to a given aviation accident has a significant impact on how the market reacts to its announcement. Inequities in the valuation of a human life are clearly reflected in stock price reactions. While recent regime changes have helped eliminate some of these imbalances further reform may be necessary.

     

Market Structure and Multiple Equilibria in Airline Markets

We provide a practical method to estimate the payoff functions of players in complete information, static, discrete games. With respect to the empirical literature on entry games originated by Bresnahan and Reiss (1990) and Berry (1992), the main novelty of our framework is to allow for general forms of heterogeneity across players without making equilibrium selection assumptions. We allow the effects that the entry of each individual airline has on the profits of its competitors, its “competitive effects,” to differ across airlines. The identified features of the model are sets of parameters (partial identification) such that the choice probabilities predicted by the econometric model are consistent with the empirical choice probabilities estimated from the data. We apply this methodology to investigate the empirical importance of firm heterogeneity as a determinant of market structure in the U.S. airline industry. We find evidence of heterogeneity across airlines in their profit functions. The competitive effects of large airlines (American, Delta, United) are different from those of low cost carriers and Southwest. Also, the competitive effect of an airline is increasing in its airport presence, which is an important measure of observable heterogeneity in the airline industry. Then we develop a policy experiment to estimate the effect of repealing the Wright Amendment on competition in markets out of the Dallas airports. We find that repealing the Wright Amendment would increase the number of markets served out of Dallas Love.     

The Emergence of Flood Insurance in Canada: Navigating Institutional Uncertainty

Flood insurance has remained unavailable in Canada based on an assessment that it lacks economic viability. In response to Canada's costliest flood event to date in 2013, the Canadian insurance industry has started to develop a framework to expand existing property insurance to cover flood damage. Research on flood insurance has overlooked why and how insurance systems transition to expand insurance coverage without evidence of economic viability. This article will address this gap through a case study on the emergence of flood insurance in Canada, and the approach to its expansion. Between 2013 and 2016, insurance industry officials representing over 60% of premiums collected in Canada were interviewed. These interviews revealed that flood insurance is being expanded in response to institutional pressure, specifically external stakeholder expectations that the insurance industry will adopt a stronger role in managing flood risk through coverage of flood damage. Further evidence of this finding is explored by assessing the emergence of a unique flood insurance model that involves a risk‐adjusted and optional product along with an expansion of government policy supporting flood risk mitigation. This approach attempts to balance industry concerns about economic viability with institutional pressure to reduce flood risk through insurance. This analysis builds on existing research by providing the first scholarly analysis of flood insurance in Canada, important “empirical” teeth to existing conceptual analysis on the availability of flood insurance, and the influence of institutional factors on risk analysis within the insurance sector.     

Health care costs: saving in the private sector

Robeson offers a number of options to employers to help reduce the impact of increasing health care costs. He points out that large organizations which employ hundreds of people have considerable market power which can be exerted to contain costs. It is suggested that the risk management departments assume the responsibility for managing the effort to reduce the costs of medical care and of the health insurance programs of these organizations since that staff is experienced at evaluating premiums and negotiating with third-party payors. The article examines a number of short-run strategies for firms to pursue to contain health care costs: (1) use alternative delivery systems such as health maintenance organizations (HMOs) which have cost-cutting potential but require marketing efforts to persuade employees of their desirability; (2) contracts with third-party payors which require a second opinion (peer review), a practice which saved one labor union over $2 million from 1972 to 1976; (3) implementation of insurance coverage for less expensive outpatient care; and (4) the use of claims review. These strategies are compared in terms of four criteria: supply of demand for health services; management effort; cost; and time necessary for realized savings. Robeson concludes that development of a management plan for containing health care costs requires an extensive analysis of alternatives, organizational objectives, existing policies, and resources, and offers a table summarizing the cost-containment strategies that a firm should consider.     

Corporate planning in domestic airlines— An Indian case study

In this article the author considers the problems of planning in the airline industry, drawing specifically on experience in the domestic Indian airline. The article seeks to examine some of the strategic issues relevant to domestic airlines which, while related here to the Indian environment, may be seen to be pertinent in most developing countries.     

Engineering manpower planning in an airline

Next to the crew on the flight deck of an aircraft, the engineers and technicians form the core of the manpower requirement of an airline. The aviation industry is a specialised one. There are mandatory requirements regarding the airworthiness of an aircraft and certification of engineers and technicians working on or inspecting an aircraft. The requirements of Engineers and Technicians cannot be directly met from the products available from Engineering Colleges and Technical Institutes. Furthermore, 3–4 years of experience in aviation industry is a prerequisite laid down by Civil Aviation Departments for obtaining their licence or approval to work as Engineers and Inspectors in Inspection Organisations. Hence planning of Engineering manpower requirements well in advance is a must for an Airline. The objective of this paper is to discuss the long term planning for engineering manpower resource, in an airline.     

Regulating the domestic air travel in India: an umpire's game

This paper analyses the competitive strategies available to an Indian airline in a scenario where the entry of private domestic airlines has only recently been allowed. The Calcutta-Delhi route is initially analysed as an example—where there are three major players competing. The fare charged by each airline being the same, the number of departures is used as one of the major competitive weapons. Game theory is used here as a useful tool to analyse such situations. The equilibrium behaviour of the airlines is studied and the possibility of the game being played at the focal point is then analysed.All over the world, airlines have had a long history of economic regulation of both their national and international operations with governments often regarding regulation as necessary—both to achieve a comprehensive route network and to achieve stable markets. The game formulated is then analysed from the point of view of the regulating body and it is found that the game-theoretic framework is able to provide powerful insights regarding regulatory interventions. Two types of interventions, viz. fare regulation as well as the introduction of a licence fee per flight, are analysed and their ability to shift the Nash equilibrium to the focal point are studied. Finally, the problem is generalised and some results are obtained which are applicable to any route with any number of operators as long as the basic nature of the competitive situation remains the same. Use of the game-theoretic approach as a powerful tool to decide regulatory interventions is thus highlighted.     

Flood Catastrophe Model for Designing Optimal Flood Insurance Program: Estimating Location‐Specific Premiums in the Netherlands

As flood risks grow worldwide, a well‐designed insurance program engaging various stakeholders becomes a vital instrument in flood risk management. The main challenge concerns the applicability of standard approaches for calculating insurance premiums of rare catastrophic losses. This article focuses on the design of a flood‐loss‐sharing program involving private insurance based on location‐specific exposures. The analysis is guided by a developed integrated catastrophe risk management (ICRM) model consisting of a GIS‐based flood model and a stochastic optimization procedure with respect to location‐specific risk exposures. To achieve the stability and robustness of the program towards floods with various recurrences, the ICRM uses stochastic optimization procedure, which relies on quantile‐related risk functions of a systemic insolvency involving overpayments and underpayments of the stakeholders. Two alternative ways of calculating insurance premiums are compared: the robust derived with the ICRM and the traditional average annual loss approach. The applicability of the proposed model is illustrated in a case study of a Rotterdam area outside the main flood protection system in the Netherlands. Our numerical experiments demonstrate essential advantages of the robust premiums, namely, that they: (1) guarantee the program's solvency under all relevant flood scenarios rather than one average event; (2) establish a tradeoff between the security of the program and the welfare of locations; and (3) decrease the need for other risk transfer and risk reduction measures.     

Evaluating airline competitiveness using multiattribute decision making

This paper presents an objective approach to the evaluation of airline competitiveness. The evaluation problem is formulated as a multiattribute decision making model and solved by three widely used methods (the simple additive weighting method, the weighted product method and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution) based on multiattribute value theory. A new empirical validation procedure is developed to deal with the inconsistency problem of evaluation outcomes produced by the three methods. The procedure selects the evaluation outcome which has a minimum expected value loss. An empirical study on Taiwan's five major domestic airlines is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. To measure and compare overall competitiveness of the airlines, five competitiveness dimensions and their associated objective performance measures on both efficiency and effectiveness are identified. The result of empirical validation for the three methods suggests the use of the simple additive weighting method. The evaluation outcome helps an airline identify its competitive advantages relative to its competitors. The objective approach presented is particularly applicable when subjective judgements on performance ratings and attribute weights are not reliable, or suitable decision makers are not available.     

基于飞行品质数据的飞行员调度模型研究

随着近几年我国航空业的迅猛发展,各大航空公司都在不断扩张自身规模,增加任务量,同时各公司又必须在保障安全的前提下进行飞行生产活动,这就使得飞行员的调度工作更为重要。本文在传统的飞行员调度模型基础上充分考虑安全的因素提出基于飞行品质数据的飞行员调度模型。通过考察调度过程中飞行员前期飞行品质表现情况,对飞行品质数据进行分类,设定搭配规则限制某些飞行品质分类级别较低的飞行员组成机组,实现提高排班安全性的目的。文中提出了根据飞行员工龄和千次率的分类方法,并运用列生成算法求解以周为单位的调度模型,这对于我国航空公司"安全第一,保障生产"的要求有着一定的借鉴意义。     

航空公司交叉持股对产能共享策略的影响研究

产能共享与交叉持股是航空公司常用的运作与财务策略,两种方式都能在一定条件下起到缓和竞争的作用。本文考虑两家航空公司的两种交叉持股模式,构建了包含顾客忠诚度的价格竞争模型,依据产能是否对称以及是否实施产能共享策略形成八种不同的情形,求解并分析了不同情形下的最优价格决策及对应期望利润。通过对比不同情形下的利润,本文发现,在单向持股模式下,当产能对称时,两家企业始终愿意采用产能共享策略,而当产能不对称时,如果存在产能共享,产能较小的企业将更愿意降低产品价格,导致市场竞争加剧,从而损害产能较大企业的盈利能力。因此,只有当持股比例相对较小时企业才愿意实施共享产能策略。在交叉持股模式下,当产能对称时,企业在交叉持股比例适中时才愿意实施产能共享策略。而当产能不对称时,企业始终不愿意采用产能共享策略。这也表明产能共享和交叉持股策略之间存在一定的相互替代作用,企业应根据不同市场状态协调使用两种策略。     

Effective measures for reducing environmental insurance costs

Can pollution prevention (P²) management practices result in lower premiums paid for business insurance? In theory, P² activities on the part of the insured can reduce the risk of pollution-related claims—but this depends on a competetive insurance market. What follows is an examination of two forms of business insurance—environmental insurance and worker's compensation insurance— and some cases where lower costs were realized.     

Consumer Evaluations of Food Risk Management Quality in Europe

In developing and implementing appropriate food risk management strategies, it is important to understand how consumers evaluate the quality of food risk management practices. The aim of this study is to model the underlying psychological factors influencing consumer evaluations of food risk management quality using structural equation modeling techniques (SEM), and to examine the extent to which the influence of these factors is country-specific (comparing respondents from Denmark, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom). A survey was developed to model the factors that drive consumer evaluations of food risk management practices and their relative importance (n= 2,533 total respondents). The measurement scales included in the structural model were configurally and metrically invariant across countries. Results show that some factors appear to drive perceptions of effective food risk management in all the countries studied, such as proactive consumer protection, which was positively related to consumers' evaluation of food risk management quality, while opaque and reactive risk management was negatively related to perceived food risk management quality. Other factors appeared to apply only in certain countries. For example, skepticism in risk assessment and communication practices was negatively related to food risk management quality, particularly so in the UK. Expertise of food risk managers appeared to be a key factor in consumers' evaluation of food risk management quality in some countries. However, trust in the honesty of food risk managers did not have a significant effect on food risk management quality. From the results, policy implications for food risk management are discussed and important directions for future research are identified.     

Utilization management, case management, and you

Historically, most monitoring functions have been carried out by insurance companies. Monitoring costs was considered their fiduciary obligation to their customers. The exercise of this fiduciary obligation kept premiums low, while increasing or maintaining the benefit levels. Risk (the assumption of losses generated by services costing more than the income received from premiums) was assumed by the insurance company and eventually passed to the customer or the payer. Today, risk is being transferred more and more to the provider. This transfer was started by the creation of DRGs, the main purpose of which was to transfer risk from payers (insurance companies, employers, state and federal government, etc.) to provider health care organizations (physician groups, individual practitioners, hospitals, clinics, etc.).