Airline competition: A comprehensive review of recent research

In recent decades, airline competition has received tremendous interest inside the research community, given the competition’s potentially extensive impacts on passengers, economies, and the society as a whole. Our review dissects the more recent literature on airline competition, aiming to comprehensively analyze the diverse perspectives and features that have been reported and investigated to date. Categories covered by our review include passenger choice models, airline service quality, price competition, network competition, airline business models, route entry / exit decisions, hubs and resource limitations, regional airports and markets, as well as studies on concentration and cooperation. In addition, we cover recently emerged studies on the COVID-19 pandemic - devastating to the entire aviation industry - and how the pandemic might have impacted the competition landscape of airlines. Through a comparative analysis of existing methodological papers and case studies, our review offers a comprehensive overview of airline competition in a critical transition phase of aviation, facing severe challenges regarding climate change and sustainability-related development goals. Our review and findings not only contribute to academic discourse but hopefully also provide valuable insights for policymakers and industrial practitioners.