| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立虎尾科技大學 === 航空與電子科技研究所 === 99 === The purpose of this research is to analyze and evaluate the route costs for chartered airline operations. In contrast to traditional scheduled route airlines, who typically use unit cost per available seat-kilometer (ASM) or passenger seat-kilometer (PSK) as the performance index, charter airlines, being exempt from the risk of load factors concerns, normally adopt block-hour rate as the cost index. As for the cost structure for the operation of a flight route, this research focuses on analyzing the direct operating costs (DOC) because indirect operating costs may vary with company strategies and marketing requirements and have no definite judging standards.
Many studies and literatures have been conducted on the analysis of direct operating cost for the airline operation. However, most researches failed to classify these cost items systematically, and therefore caused it difficult to analyze cost structure effectively to support the airline operation strategy or cost control. In view of the above deficiencies, the approach of this research proceeds in the following three aspects. Firstly, literatures on cost structure for the airline operations are reviewed. The cost items of DOC are categorized into five major groups, i.e., A (Aircraft), C (Crew), M (Maintenance), I (Insurance) and O (Operation). Characteristics of respective cost items are also discussed. Secondly, navigation and related charges are collected to construct the database. The data collected range from North-eastern Asia to South-eastern Asia, including major international airports in Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia. A case study is then performed in the third part of the thesis for a charter airline, who intended to operate 「ICN-TPE-REP」 and 「PUS-TPE-REP」scheduled charter flights. The results show that the fuel cost has the biggest share and is over 44 % of the operation cost, which highlights the difficulties in cost-down control, especially for small-sized carriers, under current high-fuel price environment. Flight-related costs (the O-group) forms the second largest portion (26.7 %) of the operation cost, which may be the main field the airline may persue for cost down. On the other hand, maintenance, crews and aircraft cost, each including less than 15.2 %, respectively, of the operation cost, illustrate the facts that the common salary-cutting strategy of the direct operating personnel used by airline corporations may have little effects on the cost down.
Although current research calculates the direct operating cost for a specific chartered route as a case study, the methodology, nevertheless, is also applicable for scheduled route cost evaluations. Based on the airport charges dataset we have established, the methodology of this research can be applied, with minor parameter modification, to support airline operation in evaluating route costs when they intend to operate scheduled as well as chartered regional flights in Eastern Asia.
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