US airline industry trends and performance 1999-2004 : analysis of Form 41 data

Since 2001, the US airline industry has faced an unprecedented set of challenges. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the airline industry reported tremendous losses and several of the largest US airlines went into bankruptcy. To recover from this situation and try to remain financially viable, many measures have been taken by airlines. As a result, the airline industry has been a very dynamic industry over the last few years. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the changes that occurred in this industry between 1999 and 2004. Only the performance of a subset of airlines, namely the 12 main passenger Majors, is examined. These 12 airlines are categorized into two subsets, the Legacies and the Lowfares, whose results are compared throughout this thesis. The analyses, that focus both on financial and operating conditions of the airlines, are mainly based on data from the Form 41 reports. This study shows that in 2004, the traffic carried by the 12 Majors was almost back to 2000 levels, with a higher portion carried by the Lowfares though. It also shows that on average, the Majors flew their aircraft further and that, because the capacity was more closely adjusted to the demand, these aircraft were operated with a higher load factor in 2004 than in 1999.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Strina François

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Peter P. Belobaba.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35562

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35562