Saisonalitätsmitigation der Flugzeugproduktivität bei integrierten europäischen Ferienfluggesellschaften durch gezielte Wetleasegabe an Schwestergesellschaften als Wettbewerbsvorteil gegenüber eigenständigen Marktakteuren

Kurzfassung

Wet leasing has become a common practice in European aviation. In addition to specialised wet lease providers in the market, wet leasing also plays an important role in integrated airline groups. Wet leasing offers airline groups the potential to allocate aircraft more efficiently among airlines with different business models and to reduce their exposure to seasonal fluctuations in demand. The author analyses and compares the aircraft productivity of the European leisure airlines Edelweiss (Switzerland), which is integrated into the Lufthansa Group and wet-leases on behalf of the full-service network carrier Swiss, and Condor (Germany), which operates as an independent leisure airline, in a time series from 2016 to 2023. The author finds that Edelweiss can effectively mitigate seasonality better than Condor by leasing aircraft to sister companies within the airline group. With this work, the author contributes to the literature on recent developments in airline management and provide insight into the benefits of airline groups integrating airlines with different business models.