TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF INDIAN AVIATION COMPANIES: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY

The present study assesses and analyzes the technical efficiency of select airline companies operating in India during post-reforms era. The study was conducted from 2004-05 to 2018-19 on six Indian airline companies covering both full-service carriers and low-cost carriers. The study intends to determine how efficiently the resources are utilized by each airline relative to its peers. Based on two input and two outputs, a non-parametric approach, namely Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to estimate the Overall Technical Efficiency (OTE) of select airline companies during the period of study. The empirical estimates show that airlines are operating with OTE between 62.2 per cent and 92.7 per cent. It is observed that Jet Airways is the most efficient unit during the period of study