Abstract: This paper estimates passenger benefits from airline flight frequencies, recognizing that this task is less straightforward for connecting trips than for nonstop travel. In doing so, the paper joins Yuan and Barwick (2026) as the only other study in the literature that confronts the problem of creating a flight-frequency measure for connecting trips. With airlines providing a crucial service in modern economies, the ability to measure the quality of that service is essential, not just for the nonstop service that links larger cities but for the connecting trips involving smaller endpoints that many passengers rely on.

Keywords: service quality; double marginalization; connecting trips; passenger benefits

JEL classification: D43; L13; L40; L93; R4