Applying FMCDM to evaluate financial performance of domestic airlines in Taiwan

Many previous researches concerning the performance of airlines usually focus on operation. Financial performance, which would influence the survival of an airline, is often ignored. To evaluate financial performance, financial ratios obtained form balance sheet, income statement and cash flow must be partitioned into several clusters and found the representative indicators from these clusters to be criteria. in this paper, we utilize grey relation analysis to cluster financial ratios and find representative indicators. Then we apply a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) method to evaluate financial performance of airlines. Finally, an empirical study of financial performance of three domestic airlines in Taiwan is illustrated. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.