Flavio Porta

Airline efficiency growth is considered one of the key factors for aviation sustainability in Africa and for creating a successful relationship between aviation activities and economic development in the continent. This paper proposes estimating the efficiency of African airlines in the period 2010–2019 using a state-of-the-art stochastic frontier model disentangling persistent efficiency, transient efficiency, and unobserved heterogeneity. We also examine the impact on both persistent and transient efficiency of (i) ownership structure, (ii) political stability, (iii) airline geographical location, (iv) airline domicile country’s economic freedom, and (v) airline participation in a global alliance. We find evidence of relatively low efficiency and decreasing returns to scale, implying that it is important to achieve better utilization of inputs. Our findings also suggest that protectionism seems still an important driver of efficiency in a context characterized by a lack of liberal...

This paper provides estimates of the destructive impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on air transport at the macro-regional level. To this end, weekly data on the air service volumes are analyzed through an ITS SARIMA model and a counterfactual analysis covering the 2016–2020. We find that the real effect of COVID-19 was a reduction above 80% in all world's macro-regions in May 2020, and still a decrease of about 70% at the end of the Summer 2020, with the only exception of China and Eastern Asia, and North America, where the reductions are, respectively, −29% and −54%. The empirical evidence confirms that the impact of the pandemic crisis and of the subsequent lockdown has been dramatic, much higher than any previous crisis. We also find that the impact is greater for intercontinental connections and for FSCs, while LCCs appear to be slightly more resilient. These results confirm that airline economic sustainability is currently at high risk, and that the unequal resources of the various countries in subsidizing national airlines could generate a competitive imbalance in the future.