Spatially Characterizing Major Airline Alliances: A Network Analysis

An airline alliance is a group of member airlines that seek to achieve the same goals through routes and airports. Hence, airports’ connectivity plays an essential role in understanding the linkage between different markets, especially the impact of neighboring airports on focal airports. An airline alliance airport network (AAAN) comprises airports as nodes and routes as edges. It could reflect a clear collaborative proportion within AAAN and competitive routes between AAANs. Recent studies adopted an airport- or route-centric perspective to evaluate the relationship between airline alliances and their member airlines; meanwhile, they mentioned that an airport community could provide valuable air transportation information because it considers the entire network structure, including the impacts of the direct and indirect routes. The objectives are to identify spatial patterns of market region in an airline alliance and characterize the differences among airline alliances (Oneworld, Star Alliance, and SkyTeam), including regions of collaboration, competition, and dominance. Our results show that Star Alliance has the highest collaboration and international market dominance among three airline alliances. The most competitive regions are Asia-Pacific, West Asia, Europe, and North and Central America. The network approach we proposed identifies market characteristics, highlights the region of market advantages in the airline alliance, and also provides more insights for airline and airline alliances to extend their market share or service areas.

Perceived Quality of an Intermediary and Its Relations with Image and Perceived Value

Whilst globalisation has offered a fertile ground for businesses to offer several services from all sides of the compass, it appears that this landscape has attracted new avenues for service provisions and transactions. All these aspects have resulted in dramatic shift in consumers' purchase decision making process. This research presents some insights of customers' perception of quality offered by intermediaries working in networked environments. The principal hypotheses are that, after experiencing services delivered by an intermediary, customers synthesise their perceptions, in terms of the quality perceived. Furthermore, this assessment will determine its image and the perceived value. A quantitative survey was conducted in an airline alliance context, to verify if the hypotheses are acceptable. A structural equation modelling tested using the PLS-SEM method demonstrates the influence of alliance wide perceived quality on airline alliances' image and perceived value.

Loyalty Programme and Meta-Services

This research focuses on the customers' perception of loyalty programme offered by networked service providers such as airline alliances. The authors call such services meta-services. Their main hypothesis is that after experiencing meta-services delivered by meta-service providers, consumers synthesise a part of their perceptions in terms of the perceived benefits of the loyalty programme. This assessment will influence the perceived value, satisfaction, and at last behavioural intentions. The authors' point of view is to highlight the determinants of this assessment, including the quality of the proposed services and rewards. A quantitative survey was conducted in an airline alliance context. A structural equation model is tested in order to verify if the hypotheses are acceptable. It also shows how passengers build their global evaluation of a frequent flyer program and how far it influences their future behaviour towards the alliance members.

Revenue Sharing in Airline Alliance Networks

This paper takes an axiomatic approach to the revenue sharing problem for an airline alliance network. We propose a simple sharing rule that allocates the revenue of each flight equally among the carriers of the flight. We show that it is the only rule satisfying the axioms of separability, the null airline property and equal treatment of equals. We show that the rule coincides with the Shapley value of the game associated with the problem. We provide two extensions of the rule, allowing it to depend on the lengths or the capacities of the flight legs. We also consider the maximum revenue problem for the airline alliance. We propose a simple integer linear programming model. We examine its Owen set. Lastly, we provide an algorithm to compute both the optimal solution and the revenue sharing solution given by the simple sharing rule for the maximum revenue problem.

Strategi Ekspansi PT. Garuda Indonesia Tbk melalui Kolaborasi Internasional dengan SkyTeam Airline Alliance

On March 5th 2014, Garuda Indonesia officially joined SkyTeam AirlineAlliance and became the first Indonesian airline that takes part in theglobal airline alliance. Based on that case, the author aims to explore theexpansion strategy of PT. Garuda Indonesa Tbk. through its membershipin SkyTeam. The author will utilize the strategic alliance theory of InternationalBusiness in understanding the relation between Garuda Indonesiaand SkyTeam. The author will also provide several datas to comparethe business operation of PT. Garuda Indonesia before and after joiningSkyTeam Airline Alliance in order to analyze the impact of this alliance.According to the collected data, the author found that the membership ofGaruda Indonesia in SkyTeam has shown positive impacts to the airline’snumber of international traffic, total operating revenues, as well as itsquality of service. Therefore, the author argues that SkyTeam AirlineAlliance contributes not only to the increase of profit earned by GarudaIndonesia, but also the airline’s quality of service.