| Summary: | 博士 === 國立成功大學 === 交通管理學系 === 88 === Since the government in Taiwan allowed some informal and private contacts with China in 1988, millions of passengers across Taiwan Strait has created billions of money for air carriers among China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. This so-called Great China market would probably be the busiest one with most passenger volume in Asia in the coming decade. Currently, all the travelers across Taiwan Strait are still transit in Hong Kong or Macau for some political reasons. As a result, specific carriers which holds service quota in this area are earning considerable profits, and the travelers are suffering lots of inconveniences. It is widely believed that direct flights across Taiwan Strait would be an inevitable policy to both sides in the near future because of the huge travel demand and the progress made in cross-strait relations.
However, there were only some few researches focused in this important topic in the past years. One of the fundamental issues is hub selection. Among the 40 qualified candidates in China, some useful and helpful airports should be firstly considered to serve the cross-strait passengers, and the methodology of hub selection should also be developed. This is just one of the problems that should be well settled before formal cross-strait negotiations start.
Base on the observation and assumption in real operations, this research has developed a model which describes the process of hub selection. Some decision models with different objectives have then been created under the conceptual structure. The selection strategies were thus be analyzed following the decision model. The first decision model to be created is the government decision model which is assumed to minimize the total travel cost including time value wasted in transit. Some median problem structures and network problem structures which have successfully reduced the problem complexities are left in the model. An efficient algorithm to solve the problem can then be developed. In practical analysis, all the data used in this research were government statistics unless some unreachable ones which have also been predicted carefully. According to the research outcome, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Zhenzhen, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Hangzhou in order should be selected to be the hub and connected with Taiwan directly. Moreover, Hong Kong and Macau that provide transit services are also found less important in passenger market after direct flights start services.
In addition to the cost minimizing model, a maximizing profit or market share model using choice probabilities is also created in this research. Some nested Logit models with pre-defined utility functions are used as market share indexes. Based on airliners’ interest, these decision models have shown that different scale and management philosophy can change the best decisions a lot. Finally, some integrated analysis with hierarchy structure that combined the different decision models discussed above are introduced. It has shown that some airports in China are easily to be chosen as a transit hub with direct flights across Taiwan Strait. These airports with very high potential should be considered to be connected firstly as the research suggested.
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