Towards Safety in a Risk Society

The purpose of this paper is to analyze in terms of security the complexity of European Air Transport after the 2001 terrorist attack, taking into account Total Factor Productivity (T.F.P.) change. Our approach regards European Air Transport as a complex system of airplanes, airports and control. The investigation is based on recent data from the Amadeus database for the largest European (EU-27) air transportation companies (1997-2005). The paper employs the Cobb-Douglas specification of the production function and, in this context, tests the hypothesis that the 2001 terrorist attack had a significant influence on the performance of the EU-27 air transportation companies. An interesting finding is that except for some companies that were negatively influenced, several others were positively influenced by the 2001 terrorist attack. The technological level of the companies included in our dataset remained almost unchanged. The empirical findings are discussed and some suggestions are made regarding