Route-based performance evaluation of Taiwanese domestic airlines using data envelopment analysis: A comment

This paper provides critical remarks and remedies to a recent article published in [Chiou, Y.-C., Chen, Y.-H., 2006. Route-based performance evaluation of Taiwanese domestic airlines using data envelopment analysis. Transportation Research Part E 42, (2) 116–127]. In their article, the authors adopted data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the route-based performance of Taiwanese domestic airlines. The present paper points out the faults or errors found in their article, in terms of variable selection, model selection, scale efficiency and scale economy, slack analysis, Tobit regression, and terminologies used. It is hoped to make more appropriate and much clearer the DEA applications to airline’s performance evaluation.