Fuel efficiency assessment with Data Envelopment Analysis

Military air forces have a significant demand for fuel, but increasing costs force them to use their fuel as efficiently as possible. We investigated the suitability of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure C-17 airlift fuel efficiency for the United States Air Mobility Command (AMC). Airlift missions constitute the decision-making units in our study. Seven respective inputs and outputs were used and three different DEA models were contrasted. The results show that DEA provides an effective ability to identify fuel usage inefficiencies. A slack-based DEA measure proved superior at differentiating inefficiencies to an established index in use by AMC planners.