Evaluating energy efficiency for airlines: An application of VFB-DEA

• The energy efficiency of airlines has considered the undesirable output.
• A new model---VBF-DEA is proposed.
• The main decisive factor is capital efficiency.

In this paper, the energy efficiency of airlines has been studied with number of employees, capital stock and tons of aviation kerosene as the inputs and Revenue Ton Kilometers, Revenue Passenger Kilometers, total business income and CO2 emissions decrease index as the outputs. A new model, Virtual Frontier Benevolent DEA Cross Efficiency model (VFB-DEA), is proposed to calculate the energy efficiencies of 11 airlines from 2008 to 2012. Spearman correlation coefficient is applied to validate the applicability of the new model. The results indicate that capital efficiency is an important factor in driving energy efficiency, and the American financial crisis had a significant influence on the change in energy efficiency during this period.