Determinants of Airline Choice in Hub Airports in Nigeria

Abstract

Currently, there are about 2000 airline operators with over 23,000 aircrafts servicing over 3,700 airports across the world, this continually stimulate airline operators to increase their market share on the global air transport landscape. This study investigate the factors determining passenger choice of airline in hub airports of Nigeria, it formulated one null hypothesis stating, there is no statistical significance relationship between airline passenger's choice and airline service attributes. Three hub airports (MMIA, Lagos, NAIA, Abuja and MAKIA, Kano) and five airlines (Arik Air, Aero Contractor, Air Peace, Azman and Medview) were purposely selected on the basis of flights and passenger traffic recorded. Using Cochran's formula for sample size determination, 384 copies of structured questionnaires were administered to collect information from domestic and international passengers. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics; Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to test the hypothesis. The result shows that airline Security (M= 4.6889), Safety (M= 4.6444) and Flight Cancellation & Delay (M= 4.62963) were the six major service elements influencing passengers'choice. The result of the hypothesis indicate that there is a significant statistical relationship between passenger's choice and airline safety(p-value= 0.006), Security (p-value=0.002), adherence to departure and arrival time (p-value=0.001), flight cancellation and delay (p-value=0.000). Whereas, there is no significant statistical relationship between passengers' income and in-flight technology service (p-value=0.583) and airline staff knowledge to answer passenger's question (p-value= 0.347). The study recommend a progressive service improvements on all the service attributes with significant impact listed above.