Do Low Cost Carriers Provide Low Quality Service?
Keywords:
service quality, low cost carriers, flight delays, on-time performance, air transportAbstract
This paper addresses the question of whether low cost carriers provide low quality service. Considerable work has been done on various aspects of airline service quality, including: examining the causes of flight delays and cancellations, investigating service quality during irregular airport operations, and exploring the link between on-time performance and airline ticket prices. Little research has been conducted, however, on the performance of low cost carriers. This paper attempts to fill this void in the literature by examining the on-time performance of six million domestic flights in 2006.We find considerable evidence indicating that low cost carriers offer more reliable flight schedules.
Downloads
References
Brueckner, J. K. (2002). Airport congestion when carriers have market power. American Economic Review, 92(5), 1357–1375. https://doi.org/10.1257/000282802762024548
Brueckner, J. K., & Van Dender, K. (2007). Atomistic congestion tolls at concentrated airports? Seeking a unified view in the internalization debate. CESifo Working Paper No. 2033, Category 1: Public Finance. June.
Forbes, S. J. (2004). The effect of air traffic delays on airline prices. Working Paper, UC San Diego Department of Economics.
Ito, H., & Lee, D. (2004). Incumbent responses to lower cost entry: Evidence from the U.S. Airline industry. Working Paper: www.darinlee.net/pdfs/incumbert.pdf.
Ito, H., & Lee, D. (2007). Domestic code sharing, alliances, and airfares in the U.S. Airline industry. The Journal of Law and Economics, 50(2), 355–380. https://doi.org/10.1086/511318
Mayer, C., & Sinai, T. (2003a). Network effects, congestion externalities, and air traffic delays: Or why not all delays are evil. American Economic Review, 93(4), 1194–1215. https://doi.org/10.1257/000282803769206269
Mazzeo, M. J. (2003). Competition and service quality in the U.S. Airline industry. Review of Industrial Organization, 22(4), 275–296. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1025565122721
Morrison, S. A., & Winston, C. (2007). The effect of FAA expenditures on air travel delays. Journal of Urban Economics, 63(2), 669–678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2007.04.005
Morrison, S. A., Winston, C., Bailey, E. E., & Kahn, A. E. (1989). Enhancing the performance of the deregulated air transportation system. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Microeconomics, 1989, 61–112. https://doi.org/10.2307/2534720
Prince, J., & Simon, D. H. (2006). Multimarket contact and on-Time performance in the U.S. Airline industry. available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=934840.
Rupp, N. G. (2007). Do carriers internalize congestion costs? Empirical evidence on the internalization question. Working Paper #0713, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.
Rupp, N. G., & Holmes, G. M. (2006). An investigation into the determinants of flight cancellations. Economica, 73(292), 749–783. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0335.2006.00509.x
Rupp, N. G., Holmes, G. M., & Desimone, J. (2005). Airline schedule recovery after airport closures: Empirical evidence since september 11. Southern Economic Journal, 71(4), 800–820. https://doi.org/10.2307/20062081
Suzuki, Y. (2000). The relationship between on-time performance and airline market share: A new approach. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 36(2), 139–154. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1366-5545(99)00026-5
Waber R, B., Carmon, Z., & Ariely, D. (2008). Commercial features of placebo and therapeutic efficacy. Journal of the American Medical Association, 299(9), 1016–1017.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2008 Nicholas G. Rupp, Tejashree Sayanak

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Article usage
- ViewsTimes this article's page was opened since the journal started recording statistics. One person can visit more than once.
- 216
- DownloadsTimes the full text of this article (usually the PDF) was opened or downloaded.
- 412
All time, as recorded by the journal.
Last 2 years: 70 views, 148 downloads.
1.91 downloads per view (journal average 1.65).Downloads of the full text for every abstract view of this article, compared with the whole journal.
Explore the journal's metrics