Analysis of Iranian Air Passengers’ Behavior Choosing Airlines in International Flights (Case study: Southeast Asia Flights)

Competitive environment has increased among Iranian and foreign carriers due to the recent changes in the field of pricing and foreign exchange rate. In addition, entry of new airlines including Low-Cost airlines can complicate competitive conditions more than before. Therefore, study of passengers' choice behavior and forecast market demand for air travels can improve planning process of airlines. For this purpose by using the stated preference statistics, the competition of Low-Cost Carriers in contrast to Full Service Carriers and based on the designed scenarios has been analyzed. Fractional factorial design technique has been used in order to design a basic mechanism for transferring information about the selection options, their attributes and each attribute level to passengers. Then, outgoing passengers who were traveling to the destinations of five south-east Asian countries were individually interviewed in Imam Khomeini (RA) International Airport and 480 questionnaires collected. The collected data were analyzed and investigated by using Multinomial Logit Model (MNL). The results indicate that ticket price and the variable of passenger's flight possibility on the desired day and hour for the Low-cost Carriers and the Full Service Carrier are quite different. The effect of these variables on passengers' category with business/non-business, the passengers who paid themselves for the tickets and others is statistically different. Also according to statistical results of model; gender, marital status, international travel experience and Membership of Flight Frequency programs (FFP) have been effective in selecting types of airlines. In addition, the rate of passengers' tendency to pay is different in various passengers' categories and in types of aviation companies.