A DEA Based Model for Ranking Air Freighters Operational Efficiency

This paper proposes a benchmarking model useful to rank and select aircraft used in the freight industry. The decision-making problem of aircraft ranking and selection is addressed by implementing an extension of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), i.e. the cross-efficiency calculation. DEA efficiency is a useful indicator to evaluate the value for money of an aircraft in the freight industry and its extension - the cross-efficiency measurement – makes it possible to rank aircraft according to this value for money measurements. A sample of 22 air freighters is used to analyze the model validity. DEA scores show that 4 aircraft models only are evaluated as being full 100% efficient, and some old models (i.e., DC 9-10F) are as efficient as the recent aircraft models sold in the market (A300F and A330-200F).