In this paper, airline passengers' cancellation and rebooking behavior across multiple carriers is analysed. Using 2004 ticketing data from ARC. Multiple origin-destination pairs are selected to examine differences in leisure and business markets as well as differences in market structure. Hazard models are used to predict the probability an individual will "survive"until the next time period or "die" due to cancellation or exchange. Unlike many applications of hazard models, this application is unique in that the exact times of birth (ticketing date) and death are known, as are the exact causes of death (cancellation, exchange on different date, exchange to different itinerary, etc.). In conclusion, this paper is one of (if not) the first to examine passenger cancellation and rebooking behavior across multiple carriers and provides new insights into airline passenger behavior (particularly related to differences between individual and group bookings). To the best of our knowledge, it is also the first published study to be based on ticket clearinghouse data from ARC. This is of particular interest to airlines because as the use of the Internet has increased, traditional data sources (such as Computerized Reservation System, CRS, data on booking reservations made through travel agencies) is becoming less reliable since it represents a smaller percentage of the market. For example, five years ago, CRS data represented about 80% of all booking transactions, while today, in some markets, it represents only about 20%. Moreover, given the backbone of many current revenue management systems is based on CRS booking data, there is increasing interest from airlines in assessing the viability of using alternative data sources, such as the ARC data. Consequently, this study will provide one of the first assessments of the benefits of using ARC data to model passenger ticketing, cancellation, and exchange behavior. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135582.
Samenvatting