Modeling Passengers' Preferences on a Short-Haul Domestic Airline with Rank-Ordered Data

Abstract

In recent years, interest in finding methods to measure and analyze airline passengers' preferences has been growing. The current state of the air transportation industry encourages the implementation of tools and methodologies for such purposes. Initial modeling results of research on the preferences of domestic airline users are presented. A field survey (computerized questionnaire on a laptop computer) was conducted in five of Israel's domestic airports. Respondents were asked to rank four alternatives as main level-of-service variables. Separate models were estimated for three passenger trip purposes: personal, tourism, and business. The results of single-choice and rank-ordered logit models are compared for all available observations. The results indicate that the combination of first-and second-rank data sets produces coefficient estimates that are efficient but not significantly better than those of the single-choice logit models.