Question

A regional airline owns 10 aircraft and employs 20 pilots. The airline makes an average of three trips per day with each of its 10 aircraft. The aircraft and their ground crews are idle part of the day. Minimum rest requirements for its pilots mean that if the airline wants to increase its flights, it must hire more pilots. The decision to hire more pilots is:

Answer 1

a short-run decision because the number of aircraft is held constant while the labor input is changed.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the short run, at least one variable or factor of production is fixed and cannot be changed. In the long run, all factors of production can be changed.

In this case, the number of aircraft is the fixed factor of production (capital) while labor is variable because more pilots can be hired. Regulation state that pilots must rest a certain amount of time in between flights, so if you want to increase the amount of flights you need to hire more pilots and cabin crews since regulations do not require planes to rest.