The goal of the paper is to observe the profit behaviour of the individual airlines and determine how each of them contributes to the total airline profit cycles. In addition, the paper aims to identify the potential causes of such behaviour in order to better understand the future direction. The paper applies the statistical (descriptive) approach based on the processing of large data sets. The visualisation techniques are applied to efficiently observe the behaviour of the individual carriers against the airline system behaviour. The data for the U.S. market have been retrieved from U.S. Department of Transport Form 41, while the European carriers related data are collected from the individual airlines itself. It is observed that the contribution of the airlines considered in the study varies across different time-frames. It will allow us to draw conclusions about how different business models affect the cycle and which one was to be preferred at a certain point in time. The different airline contributions will provide insight into whether downturns could be signalled by the performance of certain carriers. The airline industry traditionally exhibits a cyclical behaviour. The methodological framework used to examine the behaviour of the airlines’ profit mainly rely on the aggregate data enabling to draw the conclusion on the general pattern of the industry. However, the contribution of the individual carrier in the overall profit behaviour remains unclear by employing this approach. Thus, the approach proposed in will bridge this gap and shed a light to an individual airline's contribution.
