Benchmarking the Operating Efficiency of US Airlines

The global financial meltdown of late 2008 threatened the survival of many banks, insurance companies, automakers, and other institutions, further contributing to the economic slowdown already underway in the United States and abroad. The ensuing recession has negatively impacted on the airline industry in the United States with losses running into billions. In this chapter, we illustrate the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA), an operations research technique, to analyze the operating efficiency of the US airline industry by benchmarking a set of ratios that assess the operating efficiency of a firm against its peers. DEA clearly brings out the airline(s) that is (are) operating more efficiently in comparison to other airlines in the industry, and points out the areas that poorly performing airlines need to improve.