Jumpon Flyaways (Jumpon) is a travel service provider that utilizes idle charter airplanes to offer weekend getaways on short notice and at discounted fares. The company operates exclusively with Enerjet, an established charter airline that provides transportation services for people working onsite at the Oil Sands located in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. At Enerjet, airplanes are primarily used during the week for workplace transportation. With limited demand for charter services to Fort McMurray on the weekend the planes previously sat idle (jumpon, 2013). Launched in April 2013, Jumpon is capitalizing on idle assets and providing a niche travel service to a segment of the population that have the means to travel weekends with generally last minute availability. Originally, Jumpon was proposed as a business unit within Enerjet. It was instead launched as a partner under its own company name where its profits and expenses are outside of Enerjet’s balance sheet (jumpon, 2013). Although, the partnership with Enerjet and its charter flight operations is a fundamental dynamic to the potential success or failure of Jumpon, this analysis will focus solely on Jumpon’s market offering and will not assess Enerjet’s business model, operations, or strategy.
2 JUMP ON FLYAWAYS MARKET OFFERING
Jumpon’s objective is to deliver “direct flights during peak times at low prices” (Jumpon, 2013). To deliver on its mission Jumpon operates flights in response to a specific needs of a particular group of consumer demand. Six to eight weeks prior to potential departure, Jumpon advertises an offering to one city at a specific time and at a set price. Once the flight bookings have reached 80% capacity, referred to as the “jump point”, the flight is ...
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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.
Spirit addresses “price” by attempting to get the lowest possible fair for their potential customers. They have instituted their “unbundling” strategy that essentially removes all the conveniences that other airlines afford. Fees for checked bags, fees for flight changes, and no complementary in-flight beverages are just a few of the cost-trimming techniques employed. This strategy allows Spirit to come up with impossibly low fares. It also conforms to customers who just want to get from point A to point B without paying extra for services they don’t use. This strategy, coupled with an in-your-face “promotion” ploy, has made Spirit Airlines “the most profitable airline in the U.S.” (Nicas, 2012).
A switch from premium overnight services to lower – margin deferred services and ground delivery services is an advantage to Airborne Express. With existing assets including trucks, tracking systems, regional hubs and sorting facilities, they only need minor initial investments to develop fully these kinds of services. They should use these assets wisely and effectively.
Due to the increased use of the internet, it is becoming more and more easier to book online. This allows customers to book flights easier and increase Jet2’s revenue. Revenue is increased through not having to deliver or post tickets out to its customers, in comparison with other non-internet based airlines. It is believed that over 97% of Jet2’s customers book online, which further highlights Jet2’s emphasis on online bookings.
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 strategy of focusing on short haul passenger and providing rates as low as one third of their competitors, they have seen tremendous growth in the last decade. Market share for top city pairs on Southwest's schedule has reached 80% to 85%. Maintaining the largest fleet of 737's in the world and utilizing point-to-point versus the hub-and-spoke method of connection philosophy allowed Southwest to provide their service to more people at a lower cost. By putting the employee first, Southwest has found the key to success in the airline business. A happy worker is a more productive one as well as a better service provider. Southwest will continue to reserve their growth in the future by entering select markets only after careful market research.
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Canada: home of the most picturesque landscapes and land of multicultural societies. Canada has everything and more. From the massive multicultural society in Toronto, housing nearly every nationality to the great mountainous terrain where the Canadian borders meet the Arctic Circle. Soon I am to travel there and get the opportunity to see these characteristics for myself. I am therefore curious as to what I will experience and learn from this journey. This assignment consist of my expectations for the journey and my view on being a foreigner in a different country. The assignment uses the future tense.
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When a business aims to be as successful as possible in selling its products and services, it must examine in detail whether or not the products will be attractive and necessary; if the price is optimal; if the product is being distributed in the best locations; and finally, how interest and awareness can be created for the products. In order for a business to target all of these elements to the right people at the right time, it must employ the right type of marketing mix: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. In a dysfunctional time for the airline industry, most airlines, especially major carriers, are adapting the concept of "doing less with more." One low-cost carrier, JetBlue, is changing the domestic aviation landscape in this regard and is defying the odds. Here is a company that has examined each marketing mix elements carefully, has adapted them to its customer’s needs, and is succeeding because of this approach.
There are other ways in which airlines customers are segmented. The airline services are divid...
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