Air Transport: International comparisons of Labour Productivity

This paper compares labour productivity in the airline industry in the UK, the US, Germany and France. 1992 estimates have been produced for the countries as a whole and for individual airlines within these countries. Scheduled and non-scheduled services were considered and revenue weights were used to aggregate freight and passenger services. The UK had a productivity lead over the other countries of between 12 and 30%. The measures here were compared with an alternative estimation method used by McKinsey (1992). The causes of productivity differences were examined with regression analysis. This analysis suggests that the predominant causes of higher relative productivity are load factor, stage length and ownership.