A comparative efficiency and productivity analysis: Implication to airlines located in Central and South-East Europe

The purpose of the paper is to analyze performance of major carriers across Europe, with particular focus on those operating in Central and South East Europe. With the ultimate aim of becoming fully integrated into the European Union aviation market, these airlines underwent significant transformations in the last two decades. The study utilizes the Fuzzy Theory-based Data Envelopment Analysis to evaluate efficiency of the airlines since some of the indices (e.g. punctuality) could be subject to imprecise measurement. The set of airlines contains several major airlines operating in Western, Central and South-East Europe in 2008 and 2012, the years that coincide with the economic crisis and overall financial recovery. The results of the model indicate that Central and South-East European carriers tend to be less efficient in comparison to Western counterparts over the period observed, but their overall efficiency has generally improved based on the Malmquist index. Moreover, based on the calculation of the Malmquist index one can reveal that despite the fact that most of the Central and South-East Europe airlines succeeded to increase their technical efficiency through adoption of new technologies, they still remained out of the efficient frontier.