Airline performance

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Member for

13 years 8 months

Posts: 3

Hello can someone post the methodology of calculating RPK and ASK per network per month, I am trying to find out how airlines (BA) proceed, we should have a standards of measurement but nothings online, I got only definitions.
-RPK : REVENUE PASSENGER KILOMETER
-ASK : AVAILABLE SEAT KILOMETER

Original post

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 1,342

ASK is the easy one, providing you know the airline's total capacity vs routes.
The RPK is harder, and obviously can only be calculated retrospectively.

Calculate the ASK by multiplying the number of seats on each route by the total flight distance of the route (return), and then by doing this for all routes you can calculate the system wide ASK.

RPK is calculated by multiplying the number of sold (and carried, no shows don't count) seats on each route by the route distance. Again, do this for all routes and you get the system wide RPK. However, the information would be virtually impossible to get because of it's commercially sensitive nature. The rates at which the airlines publish this makes it relatively desensitised commercially, and of course across the whole network gives away no individual route secrets to competitors.

If you don't work for the airline at hand (I assume BA in the case you're trying to work out), then OAG is the best source of information for the ASKs and indeed will calculate them on a day/week/month/yearly basis for you if that's what you need (although bear in mind OAG is only really good for 3-4 months out). However, I'm afraid access to OAG is hugely expensive.

Member for

18 years 6 months

Posts: 1,497

Of course you could always go to the airline's investor page where they publish summary traffic data. Like BA for example. Without access to CRS/BSP data you won't be able to calculate it yourself.

http://press.ba.com/?p=1060

Member for

13 years 8 months

Posts: 3

I am writing a report regarding airlines' key performance.
I got ICAO form thanks it does help but it is not completely detailed.

lets take the BA summary traffic for April 2010.

in 2010 for UK/EUROPE network we have these numbers

- Passenger carried (000) = 1 239 = 1 239 000 pax
- RPK (mill) = 1 293 = 1 293 000 000
- ASK (mill) = 1 860 = 1 860 000 000

by using the definition of ASK :

ASK = Total paying pax boarded for the whole month APR x Distance flown for the whole month apr in UK/EUROP

=> Distance flown = ASK / Total paying pax = 1 860 000 000 / 1 239 000 = 1501,21 km (810.59 Nm)

is that correct ? to short no ? or may be it the average distance of the whole network of UK/EUROPE ?

we can simplify by taking as an example : Company A owning one aircraft of 150 seats and operating on 5 different destination every month 5 flights (each flight stage distance is 100km, 200km, 300km, 400km, 500km) frequency is only one flight per month for each destination

assume total pax carried/month = 1250 pax
seats available/month = 150 x 10 = 1500 seats

The out put are :
5 flights / 10 flights stages
Total distance flown/month = 200 + 400 + 600 + 800 + 1000 = 3000 km

ASK should be = 1500 x 3000 = 4 500 000
RPK = 1250 x 3000 = 3 750 000
PLF = RPK/ASK = 83,33

Is that correct ?

I am steel confused with distances ?

instead of doing this manually, what are the common airline's tools ?

Member for

18 years 6 months

Posts: 1,497

Your initial calculation should be based on RPK rather than ASK as ASK is available seat capacity.

From my experience of airline economic analyses they would have a dedicated software system which was effectively a glorified spreadsheet to pull the numbers out.

I have some reports at home which I think give average distances flown in differing route areas.

Member for

18 years 6 months

Posts: 1,497

One final point is that in the industry you will find that many of the key financial/performance indicators are just a variety of ratios based on a few key numbers and that you can concoct a whole range of figures from four or five numbers.

I used to edit an annual report which was based on an extremely detailed data collection where carriers reported cost and revenue information broken down by aircraft type, route area, type of operation, and class of service.

Amalgamated it produced a very powerful database which allowed the profitability (or otherwise) of individual route areas (such as the North Atlantic or intra European) to be analysed.

Member for

18 years 6 months

Posts: 1,497

So you asked about average stage lengths and I've found a copy of the IATA publication 'Airline Economic Results and Prospects 1999-2000' which, for my sins, I edited.

Table 18 in part 1 of the publication gives some summary statistics for the various route areas we collected year 2000 data for (detailed individual airline data from the data collection was not published although you could work out figures from the ICAO Form A data which is published).

Just to put it into context we collected data from 43 airlines which represented 49.3% of total IATA member carrier international scheduled RTKs in 2000 (revenue tonne kilometres) and added in DOT Form 41 data for 12 US member carriers that took the total representation level up to 65.5% of total IATA international scheduled RTKs in 2000.

Anyway, back to Table 18 which gives average stage lengths for 2000 and a few key ones are

Within Europe (total) 956 km

This route area is made up from the following components

Within Northern Europe 761 Km
Within Southern Europe 932 km
Trans Europe 1336 km

For comparison, the average stage length for flights in the North Atlantic route area was 5,034 km and the Transpacific was 4,756 km.

Member for

13 years 8 months

Posts: 3

thanks a lot, helpful discussion, is there any BI tools featuring that calculation, I don't know if ACAS 3 is suitable

Member for

18 years 6 months

Posts: 1,497

Sorry, I don't know what software tools airlines use now. Time has moved on since I was involved in all of it.