Airline Alliances and their Influence on Firm Performance

Literature on airline partnerships is growing, and has thus far mostly dealt with the price effects of airline consolidation. There is no clear consensus, though, whether the alliances on international markets do bring benefits to the member companies. Therefore the paper focuses on examination of the effects of alliances on size-indicators of airlines based on the panel data analysis of data from 65 air-operators 14 of which are members of one of the three major alliances (Star Alliance, SkyTeam, OneWorld).Panel data analysis examines the influence of alliance membership on turnover, total assets, and number of employees. Source data are taken from the Amadeus database, and reflect 10-year time series of 2003-2012. Calculated values of determination coefficients prove a very strong impact of an alliance membership on turnover and total assets, and relatively strong impact on the number of employees of a particular allied company.