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Special characteristics of the airline industry
Overview of the airline industry
Overview of the airline industry
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MBA: Strategic Management Assignment Introduction Markets differ in a variety of ways including the degree of concentration and competitiveness, a fact which is reflected in the concept of ‘market structure’. Economists’ models link the structural characteristics of a market to the behaviour of firms in that market and subsequently to their performance. A key question therefore is how far a firm’s strategic decisions are shaped by the structure of the market in which it operates. You are required to undertake a detailed examination of the changing nature of the long-haul transatlantic airline market. The market you are required to investigate comprises only the international passenger market (i.e. excluding the movement of goods by air) and will require you to discuss the existing market structure, examine the changing external environment and consider the emerging strategy of the airline operators in this sector. A recent article is attached for your information; “Zoom to Gloom”, which provides one illustration of the current turbulent environment for the industry sector. Attempt all the four tasks below and present your findings in the form of a report (3,000-4,000 words) divided into appropriate sections. Your report should also contain an Executive Summary (250 words) and a bibliography. Further details on the procedure you are required to follow are set out below. You might also find the attached article useful in providing background information on recent developments. Tasks 1. Having looked at the recent turbulent environment in the long-haul transatlantic sector, you are required to undertake a comprehensive examination of the macroeconomic business environment, using appropriate tools of analysis which... ... middle of paper ... ...major Canadian and British cities plus Paris. Zoom Airlines Ltd is formed in Gatwick for US-UK routes. 2006 The Boyle brothers strike a £5.7m deal with Bank of Scotland Growth Equity to open up longer-haul routes from London to the US, Mexico and Bermuda. 2007 As revealed in Scotland on Sunday, brokers Collins Stewart and Panmure Gordon are asked by the management of Zoom to explore the possibility of a flotation. The plan is for the starting price to be around £85m. January 2008 At the beginning of January, oil breaks through the landmark $100 a barrel, driven by a slumping dollar, geopolitical instability and worries over a winter fuel supply crunch. The price of aviation fuel soars. August 28, 2008 Zoom Airlines files for bankruptcy, grounds planes stung by sky-high fuel costs and cancels all flights, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at airports.
The airline industry not only transports passengers across the country and world but it also moves cargo from location to location. The largest segment for the airlines is general commercial passengers and business travelers. In 2004, there were 15 major airlines with 12 of those being mainly passenger carriers, the remaining three being cargo carriers. In addition to the large airlines (Delta, United, American, Southwest, Northwest), there are numerous low-cost regional carriers that have tapped into the larger carriers’ customer base. These smaller companies generally fly from smaller airports and serve a smaller amount of destination cities. Calling them a no-frills air carrier would not be far from the truth. Their goal is to move customers f...
This is the historic background of an American Airline company called the Southwest Airlines Co. based in Dallas which still exists and operates with great success between 57 cities in 26 states of the US, by over 300 airplanes , providing primarily short-haul, high frequency, point to point, low fare service . Through this essay we will see an analysis of the company’s advantages and disadvantages through a SWOT Analysis. We will try to localize the problems of the company at the time and in the case of a future expansion, and we will try to give a number of alternative solutions and chose one of them. The Southwest Airlines is a company that has done its first movements in the airline world in 1971 after many efforts for its opening through legal battles with competitors that did not believe that there was any particular reason why the another airline company should exist among all the others already existing. The different things that the new airline company provided were many and very interesting. The idea started from two friends Rolling King, and investment advisor, and Herb Kelleher, his lawyer, who met in order to discuss the idea of Rolling King for a low-fare, no- frills airline to fly between three major cities in Texas. The outcome of this discussion was in reality the decision of the two men to go for something that they believed would work, even though they were not positive about that. After all the legal battles between the two men and the airline companies of Texas at the time who believed it was not necessary for another airline company to enter the market, battles that prevented the operation of the company for three whole years, Southwest Airlines Co. had become a reality. Other legal battles followed in the future that justified the Southwest Airlines but left the company broke, while during the first year of its operations made losses and the earnings for the next half a year were balancing with costs. Gladly the recovery came soon and by 1978 Southwest Airlines was one of the most profitable in the country. Later on, Southwest Airlines Co. managed to provide airline transportation in eight more cities in Texas and dominated the Texas market, with low prices and frequent departures. Today the Southwest Airlines Co. is a very big domestic airline company, the fourth in the US. We will now have a small analysis of the company’s environme...
The airline industry has long attempted to segment the air travel market in order to effectively target its constituents. The classic airline model consists of First Class, Business Class and Economy, and the demographics that make up the classes have both similarities and differences to the other classes. For instance there may be similarities between business class travellers on a particular flight, but they will not all be travelling for the same reason. An almost-universal characteristic of air travel is that customers do not fly for the sake of flying; the destination is the important element and the travel is a by-product, a means-to-an-end that involves the necessity of an aircraft that gets the customer from point A to point B. Because the reasons can differ greatly in the motivations for a customer wanting to fly, it can be difficult to divide the market into discrete segments, that is, there is always going to be overlap in the preferences and characteristics of any given segment. With that in mind, the commonalities that are shared between the clientele that make up the respective classes can easily withstand analysis.
This organization belongs to the oligopoly market structure. The oligopoly market structure involves a few sellers of a standardized or differentiated product, a homogenous oligopoly or a differentiated oligopoly (McConnell, 2004, p. 467). In an oligopolistic market each firm is affected by the decisions of the other firms in the industry in determining their price and output (McConnell, 2005, P.413). Another factor of an oligopolistic market is the conditions of entry. In an oligopoly, there are significant barriers to entry into the market. These barriers exist because in these industries, three or four firms may have sufficient sales to achieve economies of scale, making the smaller firms would not be able to survive against the larger companies that control the industry (McConnell, 2005, p.
... amid nations (Gerber 2002, p. 29). Although there has been a major decrease of barriers to trade liberalisation concerning flight amenities in the last century, there are imperative uncontrollable external factors a business must assess and weigh before entering international borders and becoming a prosperous globally identified firm (Ramamurti & Sarathy 1997). Qantas, a highly esteemed patriotic and iconic Australian brand has demonstrated accomplishment intercontinentally. The ultimate success of their business, in order to sustain competitiveness in their global market, will rely heavily on their continuous assessment of combined political and legal reforms, economic dynamics, sociocultural influences, technological modifications and environmental concerns and their interlocking marketing strategies to gain the most beneficial opportunities that come their way.
Despite the growth in the market, Qantas International’s market share has been falling over the past 10years, from 34% in FY02 to 16% in FY13. The entry of Virgin Australia in 2000 in part explains this, however Virgin’s growth also coincided with the demise of Ansett in 2001 “… Virgin Blue will initially increase capacity on existing routes while evaluating what c...
According to the International Air Transport Association, 2001 was only the second year in the history of civil aviation in which international traffic declined. Overall, it is believed that the IATA membership of airlines collectively lost more than US$12 billion during this time (Dixon, 2002).
Before to select the proper alternative, three alternatives were analysed and evaluated under four decisions criteria: customer experience, cost, growth rate / market penetration and ease to implementation (See Exhibit 2: Factor Analysis). Between all the alternatives, it was suggested that Southwest Airlines enters to New York City by bidding the slots and gates at the LGA (See Exhibit 3: Alternatives Analysis). This alternative sustains the challenge of changing the customer experience which means adding more flights from and to the East; furthermore, entering to new markets will reinforce “the power of the network” through LGA. At the same time, this decision will allow signing more code-sharing agreements with other airlines flying to international destinations and offer new products and services to LUV customers as loyalty rewards, in-flight internet, onboard duty-free purchases, etc.; as a result of this, it will increase passenger’s insights and experiences by flying with Southwest Airlines. Nevertheless, there is potential risk by selecting this alternative, in the recent years the energy prices has had a huge increase affecting costs, fares and even capacity needed, however Southwest Airlines has been able to hedge fuel for decad...
Since CEO Gary Kelly took the reins of the company back in 2004, Southwest has maintained and enhanced the company’s ability to offer customers a great flying experience for low fares. This effort start early in Mr. Kelly’s tenure when he identified four success factors
Airline and travel industry profitability has been strapped by a series of events starting with a recession in business travel after the dotcom bust, followed by 9/11, the SARS epidemic, the Iraq wars, rising aviation turbine fuel prices, and the challenge from low-cost carriers. (Narayan Pandit, 2005) The fallout from rising fuel prices has been so extreme that any efficiency gains that airlines attempted to make could not make up for structural problems where labor costs remained high and low cost competition had continued to drive down yields or average fares at leading hub airports. In the last decade, US airlines alone had a yearly average of net losses of $9.1 billion (Coombs, 2011).
Lufthansa, one of the world’s biggest airliners, has divisions handing maintenance, catering and air cargo. Since the World War II the airline industry has never earned its cost of capital over the business cycle (Hitt, 2010). Most of the airline companies have either filed for bankruptcy or are being bailed out by their government. Lufthansa had also gone through these tough times, but had resurfaced to become one of the worlds most profitable airline company. The company adapted a transnational strategy, seeking to achieve both global efficiency and local responsiveness. Lufthansa’s monopoly in Germany came to a halt with the creating of the European Union. All the EU member countries become one regional and therefore the European competition became, an increasingly a local competition. Lufthansa created its regional Hubs, to cater for its domestic market. But the availability of substitutes such as bullet trains and the Euro tunnel, made is necessary for Lufthansa to create short traveling time, customizations and quality standards in the region to achieve a competitive advantage. But outside the EU there are no substitute to air travels as such all the flag carriers are competing in the market, the international airline industry is a highly competitive environment. A new force has also emerged in the world of air travel, in the form of three Gulf airlines with jumbo ambitions. Within a decade Dubai’s Emirates, Qatar Airways and Eithad from Abu Dhabi have between them carried the capacity of two hundred million passengers (Micheal, 2010). The company had to go global and therefore adopted the international corporate-level strategy, where Lufthansa will ope...
to major airports but later it went down as PE try to grow faster and
Scale Economies: the industry contains several very large players and multiple medium to small players
In conclusion, market structure is important because it leads to strategic decision making. Having a working knowledge of market structure impacts decision making because organizations will learn the characteristics of their competition and how the market will response to changes. This report discussed the four different types of market structures: monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition, and pure competition. It went into detail about what each market structure was and gave every day examples of them. Additionally, it will outlined the type of market structure AutoEdge fits into, how that market structure impacts the level of competition, elasticity of demand, price, and position in the industry.
Product Strategy of the British Airways 1.1 Introduction to product strategy Product is the most important component in an organization. Without a product there is no place, no price, no promotion, and no business. Product is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or a need. It is the core ingredient of the marketing mix and is everything favorable and unfavorable, tangible and intangible received in the exchange of an idea, service or good (Kotler 11th edition, 2003). British Airways is a business offering service products, flights across destinations, in the transportation industry.