MIT Airline Data Project

The ADP provides a basic set of data and analysis highlighting earnings and the impact on a company’s cash flow, as well as the impact of earnings and cash flow on liquidity and capitalization positions. The ADP will perform analyses of each U.S. airline that files with the SEC and provide the ratios most commonly used in the analysis of a company’s financial position. These ratios can be used for basic analysis of an individual company, as well as for comparison purposes with other companies examined by the Airline Data Project.

Dramatic changes to airline industry revenues have forced management at most U.S. airlines to review many long-standing business approaches. The rapid growth of low cost carriers (LCCs) and shifts to Internet distribution channels put downward pressure on airfares and, in turn, airline revenues. Many of these changes accelerated as airline revenues began falling behind their historic relationship with the Gross Domestic Product since late 2000. Ancillary revenues have become a critical source to individual airlines and the publicly available data can be found in the ADP. The ADP focuses on key revenue metrics to highlight the role of revenue in airline profitability and to provide context when expenses, finances and operating characteristics are analyzed. The data-set includes a simple and transparent stage-length adjustment for each carrier by year. Visitors should take into account each carrier's industry revenue position at different points in time when making conclusions about a carrier's network structure, cost position and other operational decisions. This section includes comprehensive industry statistics; while the individual airline data includes more specific network information.