Outlook for Air Transport to the Year 2015 - FILT CGIL Foggia

12 Outlook for Air Transport to the Year 201517. The progressive absorption of advanced aerospace technology into airline fleets has been a major sourceof productivity improvement for the airline industry, as measured by the quantity of output per unit of input. Asingle comprehensive measure of productivity requires comprehensive measures of output and input. For theairline industry, TKP, including both passenger and freight traffic, is a good measure of output. However, themeasurement of productivity is complicated by the diversity of inputs, which include aircraft, labour and fuel,among other resources, and also by the complexity of the production process. Several partial productivitymeasures for the aggregated operations of international scheduled airlines are shown in Table 2-3. Aircraftproductivity refers to the quantity of TKPs that are obtained from the total payload of the scheduled airline fleet.Improvements in the average load factor (the percentage of the capacity provided by aircraft flights that isoccupied with revenue-earning passengers and freight), aircraft speed, and aircraft utilization (the extent to whichaircraft are kept flying on revenue-earning missions) have all contributed to growth in aircraft productivity,although increased aircraft utilization has had by far the largest impact over the past four decades. The threecomponents of aircraft productivity have been combined into a single measure of aircraft productivity whosetrend is included among those illustrated in Figure 2-7. There have been some fluctuations in performance relatedto business cycle conditions. Over the whole 42-year period, aircraft productivity has advanced at an averageannual rate of about 2.9 per cent.18. Estimates for labour productivity, in terms of TKP per employee, are also given in Table 2-3, and thetrend in labour productivity is also illustrated in Figure 2-7. The introduction of labour-saving technology andsystems has resulted in an impressive 5.9 per cent per annum growth (on average) since 1960. The impact ofimprovements in aircraft and engine design is also seen in the improvement in fuel productivity which has grownat an average rate of about 2.3 per cent per annum over the same period.19. Productivity benefits have come from economies of scale as well as from the adoption of new technology.Some of the scale economies are closely related to the new technology. In the 1960s, the new jets were muchlarger than the propeller aircraft they were replacing. The next generation of jet aircraft, which began replacingthe early jets in the 1970s, were larger again. Aircraft size increased from an average capacity of nine tonnes in1960 to over 27 tonnes in 2002. Average aircraft size has not changed much since 1985.20. An overall index of airline productivity has been derived by combining the indices for aircraft, labour andfuel productivity into a single average measure (presented in para. 23). The average growth in this measure wasabout 5.2 per cent per annum between 1960 and 2002.Table 2-3. Productivity of international scheduled airlines World (1965–2002)(ICAO Contracting States)Average levelsProductivity measure 1965 1975 1985 1995 2002Aircraft productivityAircraft load factor (per cent) 52 50 59 60 62Aircraft speed (km/h) 469 619 634 644 648Aircraft utilization (hours per aircraft per year) 1 678 2 064 2 179 2 751 3 001Labour productivityTKP per employee (thousands) 43 82 144 258 320Fuel productivityTKP per litre of fuel (index) 100 123 187 213 234Note: Excluding operations of airlines registered in the CIS.Source: ICAO