Study of the Efficiency of Spanish Airlines: A Non-Parametric Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

Spain is an eminently tourist country, which allows the creation of countless jobs and contributes greatly to GDP growth. Millions of people visit this country every year, and more than 80% do so through air transport. This paper studies whether the 13 Spanish airlines with the highest revenues in 2018 were efficient in that year, thus filling a gap in the tourism literature. For this purpose, the non-parametric DEA technique has been used, using as inputs the total number of workers in the company and the total number of seats available (airline capacity). Total revenue and number of passengers have been used as outputs. The results obtained show that all the airlines studied within the IAG group (Iberia, Vueling, Air Nostrum, Iberia Express) are efficient, in addition to the Canary Islands airlines (Binter Canarias, Canarias Airlines and Canary Fly) and Air Europa. Likewise, the reference airlines for the inefficient ones have been determined, which will have to reduce the number of workers or make changes in capacity in order to achieve greater income and be efficient.

Air transport and tourism flows to islands: A panel analysis for southern European countries

“…The results, based on the dynamic estimation procedure, clearly demonstrated that the autoregression of the dependent variables had a high significance level, and that tourist arrivals drive the air transport offer at least as much as the contrary. The analysis confirmed that increased tourist arrivals also activate air transport demand for islands, as shown by Cifuentes‐Faura (2021), and that this increase determines the requirement of both additional air connections and air seats. In this manner, tourism destinations are responsible for attracting more tourists; therefore, they stimulate an increase in air transport demand.…”

“…Other authors have also considered the relationship between air transport and tourism (e.g. Alsumairi and Hong Tsui, 2017; Dobruszkes et al, 2016; Taumoepeau et al, 2017), providing empirical and theoretical evidence that strengthening air transport activity produces an expansion in tourism demand and employment generation (Cifuentes‐Faura, 2021). However, other authors have presented the opposite view of the role played by air transport activity in improving tourist flows.…”