Title: Ranking US airlines – a multi-attribute decision making approach

Authors: Aman Gupta; Robert O. Walton

Addresses: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Worldwide, 1 Aerospace Boulevard, Daytona Beach, FL 32114-3900, USA ' Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Worldwide, 1 Aerospace Boulevard, Daytona Beach, FL 32114-3900, USA

Abstract: Airline competition has typically been assessed typically using one performance measure, with some exceptions where a combination of a few performance measures has been used. This research presents a multi-attribute decision making approach to assess the competitiveness of airlines in the USA. The performance measures are considered under five competitiveness dimensions including, cost, price, service quality, management and productivity. Input from airline decision-makers was used to assign weights to the performance measures. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods were used to conduct a competitiveness analysis of ten US airlines for the year 2015. While the two methods produced slightly different results, the TOPSIS was found to be superior since it returned results in line with previous studies. These results can be used by airline management to benchmark against competitors.

Keywords: airlines; competition; multi-attribute; decision analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2022.123519

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2022 Vol.42 No.1, pp.75 - 88

Received: 25 Oct 2019
Accepted: 12 Jan 2020
Published online: 27 Jun 2022 *

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