Deutsche Lufthansa AG is one of the leading airlines on the globe. It was founded in 1926 as Luft Hansa. It is also the national carrier for Germany. For many, the name Lufthansa is synonymous with flying and aviation. However, the brand is a paradigm of many businesses under one company. Most of these businesses are centered on the aviation industry. However, the core activity of the firm entails passenger transportation. The firm has heavily invested in this and has several airlines in various regions of the world. These include SWISS and Sun express, was well as investment in other national carriers such as Turkish airlines, British Midland and JetBlue (Datamonitor, 2003). The operations of the firm also entail Freight services with a wholly owned subsidiary known as Lufthansa Cargo AG, which handles all freight (Cento, 2009). This segment of Lufthansa’s operations is very specialized and can transport all forms of cargo including temperature sensitive products and live animals. The firm also operates a lucrative maintenance, overhaul and repair service, which is subdivided into six categories. These include Engines, overhaul, maintenance, VIP and executive gear solutions, components and landing gear. Its IT services for the aviation services represent its other business arm. It entails the provision of IT solutions and setting up of computer centers for not only the aviation industry but other related industries. Catering and financial services are the final business segments of the firm which serve to diversify its operations and enable it to survive in a ruthlessly competitive environment. The firm competes against the likes of Emirates, American Airways, Air France and British airways in the airline industry, and against ...
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The Lufthansa Heist was a robbery that took place at the John F. Kennedy International Airport; the people (players) robbed five million dollars at the time of the robbery. The total amount of money robbed to todays’ date is estimated to be around eighteen million dollars and three million dollars in jewelry. The heist was planned by Jimmy Burke and carried out by a number of people. A van would be used to transport the cash and another car would accompany the van to run interference should something happen.
WestJet is the second-largest carrier in Canada, which mainly focuses on economic airlines. In decades past, WestJet expanded its destination network form all western Canadian cities to international scope. During this development period, IT played a important role. For example, electronic ticket is used in the airline reservation system. However, some IT-related issues also hinders the company’s development.
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.
The Airline Industry is a fascinating market. It has been one of the few industries to reach astounding milestones. For example, over 200 airlines have gone out of business since deregulation occurred in 1978. Currently, more than 50% of the airlines in the industry are operating under Chapter 11 regulations. Since 9/11, four of the six large carriers have filed for and are currently under bankruptcy court protection. Since 9/11 the industry has lost over $30 billion dollars, and this loss continues to increase. Despite the fact that the airline industry is in a state of despair, JetBlue has become the golden example, a glimpse of what the industry could be.
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).
As airline industry is a competitive marketplace, the airline companies use new technologies to improve their efficiency and decrease the overhead costs, including ‘advanced aircraft engine technology, IT solutions, and mobile technology’ (Cederholm 2014). The technology changes including technology improvement, new innovation and disruptive technology. The disruptive technology need to meet the characteristics of ‘simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability’ (Christensen 1995). The technology changes would bring both opportunities and threats to airline companies. Since Labour cost and fuel costs occupy 50% of most airlines operating cost (Groot 2014). Therefore, if new technologies could be disruptive in the two aspects, there will be important changes to current airline
Northwest Airlines is one of the pioneers in the airline transportation industry and is ranked at the fourth largest air carrier in the United States today. The success of the carrier depends on the quality and reliability of the service at a reasonable price. Close competitors force Northwest to innovate their services by increasing efficiency. This essay will try to examine different perspectives in the services needed to successfully complete the company’s objectives. The analysis will explain historical and financial perspectives that may give a better understanding of the current market trend of the organization.
Typical users of airfreight were producers of time-sensitive, high priced, finished goods such as valuable architecture and confidential documents. But in 1976, a spring survey shows that only 24% customers used both Courier Pak and Priority One services while less than 1% of them used only Courier Pak. Moreover, the cap...
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...
The main opportunities that the scheduled air transportation will have in the next five years are the possible decrease of TSA agents at airports, technology increasing the safety and comfort of the flights for the passengers and the more availability of flights for the consumers to choose from limited airlines.... ... middle of paper ... ... Dixit, A. (2000).
The International Air Transport Association (IATA). 2014. Airline Cost Performance. IATA Economics Briefing. [report] IATA, p. 31.
1. Issues 2. American Airlines’ objectives 3. The airline industry 4. Market 5. Consumer needs 6. Brand image 7. Distribution system 8. Pricing 9. Marketing related strategies 10. Assumptions and risks
David Neelman realized his vision of creating an airlines company that is focused on customer service by starting JetBlue. During the startup phase or entrepreneurial stage, typically most of the companies go through the activities of marketing the service and /or product. But Neelman, perceptive of the industry needs, went about raising enough capital before starting JetBlue, as airlines industry is a capital intensive industry. His entrepreneurial style and previous experience enabled him to identify the core value of the service “To improve the passenger experience at a low cost” that he wanted JetBlue to provide. Neelman wanted to utilize technology to bring better customer experience at a low cost. Some of the technological activities that JetBlue planned include state-of-the-art revenue management system, paperless tickets etc. His in-depth experience enabled him to identify the external factors that would affect the business such as simple check-in and boarding process, hassle free ticketing procedures etc. This emphasized his knowledge of adapting to the ever changing customer needs. Neelman instilled the culture of...
An alternate strategy for JetBlue to return to profitability is to expand the market it services. A large part of JetBlue’s business is transporting cust...