Sustainability of Chinese airlines: A modified slack‐based measure model for CO2 emissions

Sustainable airline operations have become an increasingly important issue in recent years. With this respect, several initiatives for reducing pollutant emissions—such as carbon dioxide (CO2)—in the airline industry are now under consideration by regulators, policymakers, and companies. The impact of these initiatives upon efficiency levels of airline operations is still being analysed by different authors. This article is focused on the efficiency assessment of 13 major Chinese airlines from 2008 to 2015, applying a modified slack‐based measure model to account for CO2 emissions. The impact of contextual variables related to the airline's age, fleet mix, stock market governance, ownership type, network span, and whether or not it has undergone a previous merger and acquisition process is tested by means of a stochastic non‐linear robust regression approach. Findings suggest that sustainability in Chinese airline operations is dependent upon a number of economic factors such as learning curve, economies of scale, technology type, and network management. Policy implications are derived for Chinese airlines.