Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
cruiser 200-300 seat aircraft, capable of speeds up to Mach 0.95 that could cut up
to four hours off a transatlantic rotation (Norris, 2001).
The two views of the future have different environmental implications. The
A380 offers reduced energy consumed per seat kilometre, while the Sonic cruiser
may burn half as much fuel again as a conventional aircraft (Norris, 2001) and may
make high-altitude emissions, more damaging to the environment than those of a
conventional aircraft. In its favour, the Sonic cruiser could allow travellers to fly from
closer to home and would make better use of available non-hub airport capacity.
T
RENDS
IN
THE
GLOBALIZATION
OF
AIRLINE
ACTIVITY
Airline consolidation
At a global level there is economic pressure for consolidation within the airline indus-
try. This trend is not new on a national scale. Within a country (or single economic
area in the case of the EU), commercial alliances, franchise agreements, code sharing
and outright purchase of equity stakes have typified relationships between larger and
smaller airlines.
In 1988 only two of the top 50 US regional carriers were independent, and today
none are. This pattern, a response to domestic market deregulation, is being followed
throughout the world where the majority of smaller scheduled airlines have either a
franchise, code share, equity or marketing agreement link to a major carrier. Franchise
agreements have been a means for the large airlines to gain access to feeder markets
swiftly, for lower cost. In the US, eight airlines accounted for 65.7 per cent of the
domestic market in 1981, airline consolidation since deregulation has led to six airlines
accounting for 82 per cent of the market in 1998, and there are a number of propos-
als for further consolidation into possibly just three airline groups (Jasper, 2000a).
Code sharing
The most common form of cooperation between airlines from different countries is
code sharing. Airlines offer a flight under two different codes, such that one aircraft
is flown but seats are sold by partner airlines. This allows coordination and rational-
ization of capacity and schedules. For example, when KLM and Alitalia were in a
close alliance for the service from Milan Malpensa to Sydney via Singapore, the air-
lines took joint responsibility for seat sales, took turns to operate the service,
removed almost half the previous capacity and consolidated passenger loads for
around half of the original costs. Alliances and code sharing should offer the world a
more efficient set of airline network connections, consolidation of loads and a more
efficient use of airport and aircraft capacity. Perhaps this is why the IATA load factor
has begun to creep up from 63.5 per cent in 1994 to 70 per cent over the past six
years and why the forecast is for it to rise to 73.5 per cent by 2019, despite compet-
itive forces for increased frequencies in certain markets (IATA, 2000).
Global alliances
National ownership regulations prevented the airline industry from creating single
global companies. The economic forces for globalization have not been deterred by
