The Role of Route-Level Decisions in the Efficiency and Resilience of Airline Operations: Evidence from the Wright Amendment Repeal.

This article examines how an airline's route-level decisions affect the efficiency and resilience of its operations, using a proprietary passenger-level data set from Southwest Airlines and leveraging the regulatory repeal of the Wright Amendment, which previously restricted nonstop flights from Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL). The study introduces two metrics—route inefficiency and route resilience—that incorporate travel distances, airport congestion, flight frequencies, and itinerary buffers to explain heterogeneous impacts of the repeal on scheduled travel times and long travel delays across destinations. Findings indicate that while introducing nonstop service generally improves efficiency and resilience, changes in layover airports and flight frequencies can produce mixed effects, sometimes increasing delays despite shorter travel times. A counterfactual analysis suggests that reallocating connecting passengers with short itinerary buffers to alternative flights can substantially enhance resilience with minimal efficiency loss. The study highlights the value of passenger-level data for airline managers and regulators to better assess operational performance and manage tradeoffs between efficiency and resilience.