Senior Wins Best Research Paper at Academic Business Conference

“The conference was a great learning experience and a great start to my research career. I was extremely honored to be accepted for publication (only about a 30% acceptance rate), and even more honored that established professors and researchers in the business field merited my research a Best Paper of Session Award,” said Mackey.

Mackey’s research, “A Comeback for the Combi,” focused on the Combination aircraft, or the Combi for short, which is a multimodal type of aircraft used in airline and military operations. There is typically a cargo hold in the front half of the plane, depending on the variant, and the other half is reserved for a traditional type of passenger cabin. Currently, the variant is stuck between a complete retirement and a major comeback in the airline industry.

Mackey’s research project aimed to prove that when using the combination aircraft on routes involving fluctuating passenger demand, this variant will produce higher profit margins than the implementation of a freighter or pure passenger airliner. From this research, airlines can pinpoint which routes a Combi aircraft will have a better operating margin, and will be better informed on the predicted effects of the use of the Combi carrier. Business faculty Cindy Greenman is his mentor.

The Clute Institute publishes numerous academic journals that contain the latest scientific research findings in their respective fields.