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Comprehensively evaluates the current state of the airline industry
How government intervention may impact the airline industry
Overview of the airline industry
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Airline industry is affected by no. of factors such as fuel price fluctuations, high fixed costs, strong influence of external environment and excessive use of marginal costing by carriers. Recessions in the industry tend to last longer, while recovery periods are generally shorter. Over the past nine years, it is observed that industry has made losses for five years and during the profitable years margins were on a lower end. The airlines industry is acutely sensitive to external events such as wars, economic instability, government policies and environmental regulations. Evolution of airline industry in India:- Civil aviation took its roots in India in December 1912 with the launch of the first domestic air route between Delhi and Karachi. In 1915, first Indian airline Tata Sons Ltd, initiated a regular airmail service between Karachi and Chennai. In 1953, the government nationalized the airlines industry, by enacting the Air Corporation Act. Subsequently, assets of nine existing airline companies were transferred to two new corporations - Air India International and Indian Airlines - creating a monopoly that perpetuated right up to 1993. In 1994, with the repeal of the Air Corporations Act, private carriers like Jet Airways were permitted to operate scheduled services, subject to fulfillment of certain criteria. However, some operators could not sustain and exited the business in 1997. The operating environment of the domestic airline industry underwent a substantial change between 1997-98 and 2011-12. 1997-98 to 2002-03: During this period, Indian aviation lacked focus, leadership and strategic direction, which kept the industry grounded. The sector was both, over-regulated and under-managed. No new entrants were permitted ... ... middle of paper ... ...r cent y-o-y to 4.7 billion-km during the same period. With supply outpacing demand, PLFs declined by around 300 basis points y-o-y to 77 per cent in 2011-12 from 80 per cent a year ago. The fleet size of the airline increased to 13 aircrafts in 2011-12 from 10 aircrafts a year ago owing to addition of 3 new aircrafts. The airline uses the Airbus A320-200 aircrafts for regional domestic routes. Given the requirement of minimum 20 aircrafts to start international operations, GoAir currently does not qualify to fly overseas. Go Air, is expected to see its fleet size increase from 13 to around 20 aircraft over the next 2-3 years, to be followed by the first of its 72 A320neos on order from 2017. The company has not been too aggressive with respect to market share; instead, it has been focusing on reducing costs and improving operational efficiencies.
After September 11th, 2001, the airline industry experienced a significant drop in travel. The reasons for the airline industry downfalls also included a weak U.S and global economy, a tremendous increase in fuel costs, fears of terrorist's attacks, and a decrease in both business and vacation travel.
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).
In lights of the PESTLE model, the political factors bring both opportunities and threats to Jetstar’s new proposal. Since this proposal focus on the Australia-India low price airline market, the analysis conducts involving Australia and India political environments. There are two potential opportunities in this political environment. Firstly, the Australian government has the incentive to boost the development of tourism between the two countries (Tourism Australia 2012). With the support of government, the start of the new route could be easier. For example, American government erects legislation to increase competition of the airport ‘by forcing these airports to increase the availability of scarce facilities’ (Williams 2015). Such legislations and regulations as well as financing investment or subsidies from government could directly help the airline company cut the cost. Similarly, Australian government could also have powerful intervention to influence aviation market. Thus, it is a big opportunity for Jetstar to the new route expansion if it acquires the
...o, A. (2008), ‘Boeing , Tata Industries Announce India Joint Venture’, Industry Week. Available at: http://www.industryweek.com/articles/boeing_tata_industries_announce_india_joint_venture_15820.aspx [Accessed 20 March 2011].
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).
Southwest Airlines is operating in an industry that is struggling to make profits. The slowing economic growth and raising fuel costs are lowering earnings while revenues remain the same. The macroeconomic factors affecting the airline industry include unemployment, the economic growth in the United States, and inflation. With low economic growth, consumers are finding luxury items more difficult to purchase and airline tickets for vacations fall into that category. Unemployment contributes to a lack of vacation travelers since individuals who are not employed do not have extra money for vacation or airline tickets. Inflation also causes operating costs of the airlines to be higher cutting into profits.
The perennial crisis in the airline industry: Deregulation and innovation. Order No. 3351230, Claremont Graduate University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses,, 662-n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/304861508?accountid=8364.
Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) was founded by Vijay Malaya and he is the chairman of United Breweries group (UB group) in the year 2003. Its first airplane was launched from Mumbai to Delhi in 9th may 2005. It started as a premium business class airline company. The airlines have a tag line “Fly the good times”. At the launch of airline, Vijay Malaya said “we are committed to achieving our ambition of making Kingfisher Airlines, India’s largest private airline both in capacity and market share. The airline ushered in a new era of luxury in India’s domestic aviation sector and its brand new aircraft with stylish red interiors, and smartly dressed crew and ground staff. Kingfisher was the first Indian airline to have in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems”. (Malaya, 2005). Kingfisher airlines are one of the seven airlines which were awarded the rating of five stars by skytrax. It operates 400 flights daily including the regional and international services. In 2009 it gave the highest market share in Indian airlines industries, carrying more than 1 million passengers. The main mistake was lack of understanding of customer requirements and luxurious facilities in airlines. Organizations focus on reducing costs and usually just CEO’S and top level managers prefer business class travel. Rest of the staff mostly travels by economy class. Moreover, buying most expensive business class tickets doesn’t go down well, when seniors aim to project the image of walking the talk. Secondly, the company is facing financial crisis since Mid-2008. After merging with Air Deccan in 2007, it is a low-cost airlines, provides minimum frills to customers at reasonable rates. Th...
Several large scale, interrelated conditions have affected the airline industry over the past several years in such a manner that every carrier has had to respond in order to remain viable and competitive.
During 19991-1992, Modiluft, East West and Damania went bankrupt. Air Sahara and Jet Airways survived along with government own Indian Airlines because they had the capability to bear losses. Globalization and privatization had a major impact on aviation industry. Indian aviation industry was deregulated by the government in 1990s. As a result now 14 airlines are operating today in Indian sky. Now, collaboration with international organization and foreign direct investment are welcome to improve infrastructure and technology. Today people who can not afford high prices of Full Service Carriers (FSC) can travel by Low Cost Carriers (LCC) or budget airlines. Air Deccan was India’s first LCC started in 2003. It flies to several metro and non-metro destinations. All airlines have three major fixed costs i.e. fuel costs, financing or aircraft lease and labour cost. But LCC costs are 10 to 15 per cent lower than FSC. This is because of three reasons. Firstly, saving on distribution cost as passengers book tickets on the internet. Secondly, no frills are offered on board. Thirdly, to accommodate additional seats, catering and cabin crew space in these aircraft has been used. So these aircraft have 40 seats more than the FSC.
Air India airline is one of the biggest airline in the India. It was established by the famous company TATA and since its incorporation. It has grown very well and has spread all over the world in the different destinations. It has become the reputable brand in the airline industry with having the operations over 152 destinations. It has link up connection in the 35 countries and it has currently having 137 fleets. This company becomes the public limited company in the 1946. The company has international and the local route and its performance is increasing day by day with the pace of the good growth as compare to the other airlines in the industries in the area and the channels in which this airline is working.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA). 2014. Airline Cost Performance. IATA Economics Briefing. [report] IATA, p. 31.
Macroeconomic environment: The airline industry has proven particularly sensitive to phenomena such as terrorist attacks, wars, outbreaks (SARS), drastic currency fluctuations, and the like. These phenomena tend to have a significant impact on the cost of fuel, overall demand for air transportation, tourism, etc.
Market segmentation means dividing the market into distinct groups that have common needs and will respond similarly to marketing action. Each segment must be unique, have common needs, and respond in a similar manner to marketing efforts. Target market is the group of potential customer that has been selected by business to focus its marketing efforts towards. This is the group the business wants to sell its products/services to. Positioning refers to the image created in the minds of customer of its product or brand. It is a perception created in the minds of the consumer relative to that of its competitors.
In India, one can never over-look the political factors which influence each and every industry existing in the country. Like it or not, the political interference has to be present everywhere. Given below are a few of the political factors with respect to the airline industry: