Effects of asymmetric demands on airline scheduling decisions in a network

Abstract

This paper analyzes the flight-frequency choices of a monopoly airline serving a hub-and-spoke network with asymmetric demands. In the 3-city hub-and-spoke network, demand is allowed to differ across markets. Analysis is done separately for two distinct passenger types: those who assign zero cost to layovers, and those who assign a very high cost. Both cases result in a higher flight frequency on the higher-demand spoke. Using a simulation, the flight-frequency choices for the two models are compared, and results show that the difference between the flight-frequency choices on the high and low demand spokes is smaller in the high-cost-layover case than in the zero-cost case.