| Summary: | 博士 === 國立交通大學 === 交通運輸研究所 === 99 === Due to increasingly fast growth of air cargo transport service demand in the Asian international cargo market, not only all-cargo airlines have been expanding their services in Asia but combination carriers would like to compete keenly with all cargo carriers. The entry of all-cargo airlines would result in a price and/or frequency competition with existing service on the specific route market. This study deals with the competition for international cargo service between combination and all-cargo carriers in the Asian markets.
This study considers a market composed of combination and all-cargo airlines and proposes two sets of models dealing with the competition on a single route and at the network level respectively. To place the airlines’ decisions in a competitive context, a game-theoretic approach has been developed in the form of a non-cooperative game. Using analytical approaches, the models for planning frequency and calculating operation costs are set up. Optimization models in the form of mathematical programming are developed and the iterative process of backward induction is used to solve the proposed models. Through seeking the solutions of the problems, the equilibrium outcome and best-response strategies of participating airlines are predicted. Furthermore, to predict the cargo shipment demand on Taiwan’s route markets, an air cargo flow model of international routes is developed based on the panel data of air cargo services on scheduled routes at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport during the years 2004-2007.
The case studies are presented to illustrate the application of the proposed models using data available from Taiwan international route markets and empirical industrial data. The results include that (1) combination carriers appear to be the dominators in both two case markets, especially on short-haul routes; (2) all-cargo carriers tend to focus their attention on those routes where there are particularly heavy demand for cargo space; (3) the competition of airlines for general air cargo service are affected by cargo demand in the market, air travel demand on passenger routes, the operation scale of all-cargo carriers and the availability of time slots at the airports for all-cargo operators’ flights; (4) the network competition model could be expanded to analyze the hub location choice problems. Moreover, The empirical route demand model indicates that population, air freight rate and three dummy variables, including the regional economic bloc of the “Chinese Circle”, the Open Sky Agreements and long established colonial links, are the key determinants of international air cargo flows from/to Taiwan.
In conclusion, this study proposed a framework to predict and analyze the best-response strategies of airlines under the environment where combination and all-cargo carriers coexist. These results could provide as useful information for international air cargo airlines in operational planning.
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