Accounting for price endogeneity in airline itinerary choice models

This study formulates an itinerary choice model that is consistent with those used by industry and corrects for price endogeneity using a control function that uses several types of instrumental variables. We estimate our models using database of more than 3 million tickets provided by the Airlines Reporting Corporation. Results based on Continental U.S. markets for May 2013 departures show that models that fail to account for price endogeneity overestimate customers’ value of time and result in biased price estimates and incorrect pricing recommendations. Extensions to advanced discrete choice models show the importance of accounting for inter-alternative substitution for products that share similar departure times.