published_or_final_version / abstract / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

The basic idea of the diploma thesis is to analyze the functionality of alliances in the global economic environment. Thesis specializes on the particular type of alliance - airline alliance. It is structurally divided into three separated chapters. The first chapter follows the basic determinants of the alliances functioning, their structure, composition and typology. Its aim is to explain the most important factors necessary for understanding the main meaning of the chapters. It focuses on the main advantages and disadvantages of the companies involved in alliances. The second chapter focuses on the implementation of alliances in airline industry. It monitors their historical development, legislative and regulatory environment in which the alliances were established and exist. It focuses on mapping the European and American area. The third chapter compares advantages and disadvantages of large and small members of Star Alliance within the European, American and Asian market. It compares them on the level of regional comparison, and then based on comparative fundamental and technical analyses.

Thesis advisor: Frank Gollop / Can an emissions tax reduce the carbon footprint of U.S. domestic air travel without hurting the vitality of the industry? This empirical analysis models the U.S. domestic airline industry using a structural equations system and simulates the effects of a hypothetical carbon emissions tax on the market for U.S. air travel. The price elasticity of demand for air travel in the long-haul U.S. domestic passenger market substantiates that a low level environmental policy would not cause unmanageable harm to the airlines or consumers. This thesis is a practical, quantitative analysis of the feasibility of an environmental policy for U.S. aviation. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

TESIS PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE MAGÍSTER EN FINANZAS / El presente trabajo corresponde a la valoración de la empresa SKY Airline S.A., en adelante SKY, por el método de múltiplos. Como parte de lo anterior, fue realizado un análisis y descripción de la empresa e industria en que opera, a fin de conocer el contexto del negocio y antecedentes preliminares que ayuden a comprender las variables que intervienen en la valoración. También, se realizó una descripción del financiamiento de la empresa, y a su vez, una estimación de la estructura de capital de la empresa. Dado lo anterior, el análisis de costo de capital o tasa de descuento de los flujos proyectados. También se realizó un análisis de las tasas de crecimiento históricas a nivel de empresa e industria, análisis de costos, activos y una proyección de sus resultados. Finalmente, a partir de los estados de resultados de SKY, se aplicó una valorización mediante múltiplos, teniendo como comparativo a LATAM. Los resultados obtenidos en este trabajo son interesantes para SKY. Esta es una empresa que se encuentra en una posición compleja desde el punto de vista del valor de la compañía, nivel de deuda y gestión de sus costos. Pero, tiene ciertos puntos fuertes que definitivamente señalan todo lo contrario de lo anterior. Le invito a conocer este detallado estudio de SKY y las interesantes conclusiones obtenidas de la primera aerolínea LowCost nacional. / 2019-05-15

Thesis. 1975. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / Bibliography: leaf 82. / by Philip M. Condit. / M.S.

This study provides empirical evidence of a positive relationship between operating leverage and systematic risk of the U.S. airline industry. This paper contributes to the literature related to operating leverage by developing a method to estimate the degree of operating leverage using publicly available information on aircraft capacity and operating expenses of the publicly listed airlines. The results suggest that, holding other financial characteristics constant, a rise in operating leverage of an airline is associated with an increase in systematic risk as perceived by the investors. In order to achieve desirable levels of operating leverage, the airlines are advised to contemplate decisions on capacity adjustments and operating expenses management in reactions to changes in economic conditions.

This thesis describes the development of a decision support tool for unplanned maintenance of aircraft at ramp time during airport operations. Ramp time is the time between an aircraft arrival and its next departure. Clearance of an aircraft for flight is controlled by aviation regulations. Therefore decisions regarding maintenance are taken by engineers who have to comply with the regulations that are governed outside the organizational structure of the airline. Unplanned maintenance also often disrupts the normal operational scheduling and leads to significant costs. Therefore, the decision support tool must include the relevant aviation regulations, be capable of rescheduling to minimise disruption and be able to optimise solutions based on cost. In this project an aircraft schedule is used to demonstrate the procedures. An assumed fleet of six airplanes fly between three cities. Consultation with aviation experts ensured the size of the fleet and operations are realistic. A regulation database was developed based on the Master Minimum Equipment List (MMEL) for the aircraft, and a computer programme was developed to provide different options that comply with the regulations and take into account scheduling disruption and costs. In certain cases the regulations allow an aircraft to fly with some components inoperable so long as backup systems can perform the tasks. It is possible then to postpone the maintenance until the aircraft arrives at a properly equipped airport, or until a longer scheduled stopover reduces the disruption to operations. To address the engineering aspects of the project, maintenance of a single component that appears in the MMEL for the chosen aircraft is considered. To plan maintenance following a failure, the cause of the failure needs to be identified. Only then can the resources and time required to repair the defect be defined. The programme validation has confirmed it is able to balance different aspects of decisions related to unplanned aircraft ramp maintenance. Although the programme is based on an assumed fleet operation, the structure of the programme will allow it to be applied to other fleet and route configurations.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1983.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Chair: Garrow, Laurie; Committee Co-Chair: Castillo, Marco; Committee Co-Chair: Goldsman, David; Committee Member: Griffin, Paul; Committee Member: White, Chelsea (Chip). Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

Disruption Management in the airline industry plays an important role in airline operations. The goal of disruption management is to minimize the costs associated with disruptions while returning to the original schedule. Methodologies using advanced tabu search (TS) were investigated to solve two flight rescheduling problems: the aircraft grounding problem and the reduced station capacity problem. The objectives of both problems were to minimize the schedule recovery costs associated with flight schedule modifications and deviations from the original route, which are composed of the sum of delay costs, cancellation costs and aircraft route swap costs. Reflecting the cost of the deviation from the original route, the swap cost was modeled as a non-linear function of the swaps of aircraft between routes. In each problem, a stand-alone tabu search approach was constructed to holistically minimize the sum of the cost of delays, cancellations and swaps. Next a hybrid method which combined a time-space network flow model with side constraints and a limited tabu search was created which attacked the problem in two steps: first, the total cost of delays and cancellations was minimized by the network flow model; second, a limited tabu search was conducted to minimize the number of swaps. A second hybrid method was then developed, which utilized the result from the first hybrid method as starting solution for the stand-alone tabu search. The results of the experiments performed with the hybrid methods clearly indicate that integrating TS with classical optimization methods has marked potential for improving the results of a disruption management technique.