Efficiency evaluation of Brazilian airlines operations considering the Covid-19 outbreak.

In this paper we evaluate the operational efficiency of the Brazilian airlines considering the novel coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak. This novel coronavirus was first reported end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, however the powerful contamination spread among people forced the World Health Organization to characterize the Covid-19 as a pandemic in March of 2020. Here we analyze the main Brazilian airlines operations response due to lower demand because Covid-19 outbreak in first quarter of 2020 comparing with first quarter of 2019. The analysis here aims to verify the efficiency of airlines in domestic air transport market in Brazil through Multicriteria Data Envelopment Analysis (MCDEA) model. We used MCDEA to avoid limitations of classical DEA models for the case, especially the numbers of decision units and variable. In this paper we used an improvement of the MCDEA model to seek benchmarks considering a dual model all objective functions of MCDEA. The results highlight the challenges for the airlines, due to flight restriction and demand dropping. And also, the evaluation exposes the different company configuration of aircrafts age and network reconfiguration which was reflected by the efficiency difference on the period. The assessment shows the company with a better mix of aircraft models has a leverage on efficiency response due to unpredictable period as the pandemic Covid-19 outbreak. • Air transport largely facilitates diseases spread worldwide. • Analysis of Brazilian airlines during the Covid-19 outbreak. • Assessment considers the Multicriteria Data Envelopment Analysis (MCDEA) model. • Improvement of the MCDEA model to seek benchmarks based in a duality formulation. • Efficiency challenges for the airlines to outbrave the Covid-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]